Cores vs Clock Speed
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I’ve decided I want to do a custom build and thinking through the CPU selection. Obviously there are a plethora of choices but I have primarily been focused on finding something that is about 35W output or less, has a minimum of 4 cores, onboard graphics and supports AES-NI. The motherboard will have Intel ethernet ports and minimum 2 PCI x16 slots so that I can add a QAT card and NIC as appropriate.
It seems the 6-core chips offer a better bang for the buck and the AMD chips offer that same bang but with higher clock speeds. Assuming you can find the GE chips, which is hard.
This raises the following two questions:
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Does pfSense respond best to more cores or more clock speed? For instance, would an 8-core i7-11700T provide better performance than the 6-core i3-12100T, i5-12400T or Ryzen 5-5600GE?
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I know NIC’s need to be Intel, but do I need to be concerned with compatibility issues if I would lean towards the AMD chips & motherboards?
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What do you intend on doing?
Plain pfSense runs greater than 1Gb on an Atom.
Some functions like OpenVPN prefer clock speed. I think any of your choices will exceed most needs. -
Is FreeBSD already optimized for Alder Lake?
Found this (its from February)
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@andyrh will be running a SOHO and personal network from the same server. 1gb symmetrical fiber connection. About 6-8 VLAN's, firewall rules, Suricata, pfBlockerNG, Squid, SquidGuard and LiteSquid. Will also run VPN in two conditions -- setup remote access back to the server when traveling and will then set up select VLAN's to push all incoming/outgoing traffic through VPN.
I think all them are likely overkill. However, I also see the packages, rules and VPN activity are the primary drivers for hardware selection. As we are new to pfSense there is an urge to build something that will carry us now, but also over the next 5+ years as we better learn the capabilities of pfSense and our need set.
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@mcury thank you for that share. I wasn't aware Alder Lake was having issues with FreeBSD. Definitely doesn't sound like my plan for integrated graphics will work as current workarounds was using discrete graphics.
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S stephenw10 moved this topic from Official Netgate® Hardware on
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Thank you @stephenw10 for moving this post. I didn't realize I was in the wrong sub-category until it was too late.
Can you or the other Netgate guys provide confirmation about pfSense and support for newer processor support?
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I've never personally tested but if it's supported by FreeBSD then it will work with pfSense. Especially now we are moving to a build based on FreeBSD head.
The best thing to do is check for reports here and at the FreeBSD forums.
Steve
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@stephenw10 appreciate the help. Am I correct to assume that if I were to virtualize pfSense then the hardware issue would go away?
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Yes. As long as it's supported by the hypervisor.
