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    Upgrade 2nd Gen i5 to 2nd Gen i7?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      Personally I would not bother unless you know you're hitting a CPU limit. If you hit that at some point in the future swap it then. Those CPUs are unlikely to be getting more expensive anytime soon.

      Steve

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      • J
        jsmiddleton4 @stephenw10
        last edited by jsmiddleton4

        @stephenw10
        From what I've read it is very unlikely I'll hit a CPU limit with PFSense and the 2nd Gen i5. I'm routing, nothing else.

        What's amazing to me is for the cost of 3 2.5gb NIC's, I have a router that, even IF I could buy a premade router with the specs of just a 2nd Gen i5, blows away even the most expensive Asus, Netgear, TPlink, etc.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • stephenw10S
          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
          last edited by

          Exactly. So save your $50 towards something else. 😉

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          • J
            jsmiddleton4 @stephenw10
            last edited by

            @stephenw10
            Yes but I don't get to wear the I have an i7 Geek badge.

            johnpozJ JKnottJ NollipfSenseN 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              Ha, well that's also true!

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • johnpozJ
                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @jsmiddleton4
                last edited by johnpoz

                @jsmiddleton4 said in Upgrade 2nd Gen i5 to 2nd Gen i7?:

                don't get to wear the I have an i7 Geek badge.

                Where do you get such badges? ;) I want my i9-11900K badge for my new screaming PC hehehe.. Not used for pfsense - but still I should still get to wear the badge ;)

                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                • J
                  jsmiddleton4 @johnpoz
                  last edited by

                  @johnpoz

                  I'd say you have to ask in the right forum then. Nice PC.

                  I imagine if you put PFSense on there at boot you'd not have a chance to see anything go by. On, boom, done.

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                  • T
                    Tzvia
                    last edited by

                    i7? Naw, unless you are running symmetrical gig in an office with like 40 users... and at that point you would want something newer anyway.
                    However, spend half that 50 bucks and get like a 120 or 128gig ssd to replace that spinner. Less power use, less heat in the box. I'm also assuming that the existing drive(s) may be as old as the PC or darn close. Install PFSense with ZFS on it- supports trim/wear leveling. Faster for things like when it downloads new block lists for PFBlocker or just when saving changes in the GUI. I picked up some Kensington 120s for like 22 bucks each earlier this year and use the as boot drives/scratch drives in my servers and they work well for this task. Probably the best upgrade I could have made, makes PFSense snappy.

                    Tzvia

                    Current build:
                    Hunsn/CWWK Pentium Gold 8505, 6x i226v 'micro firewall'
                    16 gigs ram
                    500gig WD Blue nvme
                    Using modded BIOS (enabled CSTATES)
                    PFSense 2.72-RELEASE
                    Enabled Intel SpeedShift
                    Snort
                    PFBlockerNG
                    LAN and 5 VLANS

                    johnpozJ J 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • johnpozJ
                      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @Tzvia
                      last edited by

                      @tzvia yeah exactly - such a powerful cpu would be way overkill for all but the most intensive scenarios.. You would really need to be pushing some real traffic to need something anywhere near current I7 I would think.

                      Only reason I got the i9 was "why not" hehhe - when I realized my old pc was 12 years old.. It was time to upgrade. That was only a i5, many many generations behind. It really did everything I asked of it - and could of continued to do so for awhile I am sure. The biggest reason I upgraded was to get better transcoding of video.. My old gt710 while worked, and could do x264 in hardware.. That was really the latest gpu I could put in that aging machine. New box has a 1660 ti, and it freaking screams in comparison when transcoding my video at x265 even.

                      But for my day to day stuff the i9 is way overkill, but hey if I'm going to buy myself a xmas gift.. Why not make it a good one.. I sure didn't need 32gig of ram or a 1TB nvme either ;) hehehe

                      But I sure wouldn't think to use such a powerful setup for my pfsense ;) hehehe. Now my old box sure could of leveraged as a pfsense box.. But it even is way more than needed and power hungry compared to my sg4860.

                      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                      • J
                        jsmiddleton4 @Tzvia
                        last edited by

                        @tzvia

                        I’m barely pushing PFSense.

                        Been reading about ZFS. The drive is not new but its not ancient. Tested it thoroughly to make sure it is reliable. SMART enabled in PFSense to keep an eye on it. SMART is very happy.

                        I may even have an extra SSD around. Like in an external drive.

                        I’ll have to get steps for ZFS and copying PFSense to new drive.

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                        • J
                          jsmiddleton4 @johnpoz
                          last edited by

                          @johnpoz

                          Used to run a Plex server and archive a bazillion movies/TV shows.

                          Those days long gone.

                          johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • johnpozJ
                            johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @jsmiddleton4
                            last edited by

                            @jsmiddleton4 I run my plex off my nas, just a ds918+ and it does fine.. But being a bit ocd I guess. I like my stuff to a standard. And with trying to keep space low, etc. I try and do everything via a mkv container, with either x264 or x265 with x265 being best. And AC3 for audio vs AAC. But it would take hours to change to x265 with my old setup.

                            Now with shiny new rig, I can a transcode a 1.5-2 hour movie to x265 in a few minutes ;)

                            I am slowing now going through where I can save the most space and transcode to x265, and also finding stuff that was still AAC vs AC3, but that is a easy fix with ffmpeg and never took more than a few seconds anyway.

                            300px-But_It's_Honest_Work.jpg

                            An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                            If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                            Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                            SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                            J N 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • J
                              jsmiddleton4 @johnpoz
                              last edited by

                              @johnpoz

                              DVDFab, sometimes MakeMKV.

                              Got too crazy with NAS drives, etc. Now its VUDU…..

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                              • N
                                nimrod @johnpoz
                                last edited by

                                @johnpoz said in Upgrade 2nd Gen i5 to 2nd Gen i7?:

                                @jsmiddleton4 I run my plex off my nas, just a ds918+ and it does fine.. But being a bit ocd I guess. I like my stuff to a standard. And with trying to keep space low, etc. I try and do everything via a mkv container, with either x264 or x265 with x265 being best. And AC3 for audio vs AAC. But it would take hours to change to x265 with my old setup.

                                Now with shiny new rig, I can a transcode a 1.5-2 hour movie to x265 in a few minutes ;)

                                I am slowing now going through where I can save the most space and transcode to x265, and also finding stuff that was still AAC vs AC3, but that is a easy fix with ffmpeg and never took more than a few seconds anyway.

                                300px-But_It's_Honest_Work.jpg

                                Does it make sense to get a faster/modern CPU for pfBlockerNG and insane amount of lists? I mean really insane amount of entires. Like 10M+. With at least 32GB of RAM of course. I currently have 8GB of ram, and im hitting a hard limit in pfBlocker. Not sure if thats because of CPU or having just 8GB of RAM.

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                                • JKnottJ
                                  JKnott @jsmiddleton4
                                  last edited by

                                  @jsmiddleton4 said in Upgrade 2nd Gen i5 to 2nd Gen i7?:

                                  Yes but I don't get to wear the I have an i7 Geek badge.

                                  Well, we all have to make our sacrifices. 😉

                                  BTW, I run pfsense on the computer described in my sig. It has no problem keeping up with my 500/20 connection.

                                  PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
                                  i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
                                  UniFi AC-Lite access point

                                  I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

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                                  • J
                                    jsmiddleton4 @JKnott
                                    last edited by

                                    I looked at SSD's and going ZFS. The hard drive now is a 7200 RPM Seagate. Searched for date of manufacture but would have to get to its label to verify. Not pulling it out for just that.

                                    SMART continues to be exceedingly happy.

                                    Might over time, maybe if move to 2.6.x. Save backup from current config to a thumb drive, clean install to new SSD, restore.

                                    Only thing I'll have to play with is the boot options in the BIOS for UEFI, Legacy, etc.

                                    JKnottJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • JKnottJ
                                      JKnott @jsmiddleton4
                                      last edited by

                                      @jsmiddleton4

                                      I used ZFS for this system. I also recently bought a 1 TB SSD for my ThinkPad. It provided a significant performance boost.

                                      PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
                                      i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
                                      UniFi AC-Lite access point

                                      I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • NollipfSenseN
                                        NollipfSense @jsmiddleton4
                                        last edited by

                                        @jsmiddleton4 Go for it, you'll get a better pleasure for your pfSense box knowing it got i7 cpu for just $50...and/or, bump it up to 16GB RAM

                                        pfSense+ 23.09 Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF Quadcore i7 dual Raid-ZFS 128GB-SSD 32GB-RAM PCI-Intel i350-t4 NIC, -Intel QAT 8950.
                                        pfSense+ 23.09 VM-Proxmox, Dell Precision Xeon-W2155 Nvme 500GB-ZFS 128GB-RAM PCIe-Intel i350-t4, Intel QAT-8950, P-cloud.

                                        J 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                        • J
                                          jsmiddleton4 @NollipfSense
                                          last edited by jsmiddleton4

                                          @nollipfsense

                                          Funny.

                                          But I did go for it. 40 bucks though. Which was just too hard to pass up.

                                          Also figured need to clean and renew thermal grease and new fan. Would make no sense to put old fan back on.

                                          Its kinda sad I’m doing the swap expecting to notice nothing.

                                          NollipfSenseN 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • NollipfSenseN
                                            NollipfSense @jsmiddleton4
                                            last edited by

                                            @jsmiddleton4 Congrats...now put it to work...the i7 won't sweat despite I like to run IDS/IPS on WAN (Suricata) and LAN (Snort) which is (not recommended by maintainer) as well as pfBlockerNG, VPN, and FreePBX in a DMZ.

                                            pfSense+ 23.09 Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF Quadcore i7 dual Raid-ZFS 128GB-SSD 32GB-RAM PCI-Intel i350-t4 NIC, -Intel QAT 8950.
                                            pfSense+ 23.09 VM-Proxmox, Dell Precision Xeon-W2155 Nvme 500GB-ZFS 128GB-RAM PCIe-Intel i350-t4, Intel QAT-8950, P-cloud.

                                            J 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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