Hardware: bigger but cheaper, or smaller but more expensive?
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I am running a P4 based 1U appliance at home. http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,25011.0.html
With zero tweaking it consumed ~90W when running at 100%, such as during boot up. I never saw it use more than 100W. That was with a 2.8GHz P4. There are quite a few options for swapping out the CPU to reduce the peak power draw with the socket 478. I have ended up running a 1.8GHz P4-M underclocked to 1.2GHz. This is still well within my needs at home but draws only ~40W most of the time.
I could swap it for a 20W box but with a saving of only 20-30W it would take me a long time to recoup that.
Actually the biggest problem I had was noise. The fans required to cool a P4 in a 1U height are very small, very fast, very loud!Steve
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@cmb:
The Atom alternatives are quiet and don't put off much heat either, where a P4 1U box would be a loud space heater. Whether that matters depends on your circumstances.
@cmb:
The Atom alternatives are quiet and don't put off much heat either, where a P4 1U box would be a loud space heater. Whether that matters depends on your circumstances.
Yeah even though it's going in a closet in our largely unused guest bedroom I did have concerns about the noise. I think I'll maybe wait and go with one of those newer Atom boards.
If I understand all the info I've read correctly, I shouldn't need anything more than an Atom, like a Core i3 or something, unless I'm planning on running a lot of services like snort or squid (which I'm not), right? As I mentioned it'll only be handling a 24/3 connection at most and OpenVPN.
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I calculated based on what I was paying for electricity per kilowatt-hour in my neck of the woods (upstate New York) that one watt of consumption 24 hours per day, 365 days per year costs approximately $1. So the cost of running a box that draws an average of 100 watts will cost about $100 per year.
As previous posters have mentioned, a Pentium 4-based system will draw about that much. On the other hand, the Atom-based Soekris 6501 I just bought draws only 6 watts. So after only ONE year of usage, the Soekris will cost you $94 less in electricity.
Also, this is based on my power rates, which are relatively low compared to the national average. If you live in somewhere where power is expensive like California, the difference will be even greater. And this doesn't even figure in the cost of dealing with the heat generated.
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I just did a new build on an HP DC7800 small form factor. Pentium Core-2 duo with 3 gigs of ram, 3xGB Ethernet, 16GB SSD.
Costs was approximately:
HP DC7800 on eBay $75
Intel Dual NIC on eBay $25
16 gig SSD on eBay $35
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$135I disconnected all of the drives except for the SSD and it draws about 40 watts at idle... Seems to perform a lot better than my old dual core Atom build which was drawing about 30 watts at idle. It's nice and quiet too.
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I just did a new build on an HP DC7800 small form factor. Pentium Core-2 duo with 3 gigs of ram, 3xGB Ethernet, 16GB SSD.
Costs was approximately:
Intel Dual NIC on eBay $25That sounds like a good build. Would you mind sharing the model # of the Intel dual NIC you used?
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Would you mind sharing the model # of the Intel dual NIC you used?
See here: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,45430.msg243441.html#msg243441
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It was an HP NC360T Dual Gigabit PCIe NIC. $25 with free shipping…
Downside of this NIC is that it is low profile but the bracket is full-height. Took me a little work with the Dremel to convert the full-height bracket into a low profile bracket (not the first time I've done this trick). Upside - it was cheap and now I have three Intel ports!
I just did a new build on an HP DC7800 small form factor. Pentium Core-2 duo with 3 gigs of ram, 3xGB Ethernet, 16GB SSD.
Costs was approximately:
Intel Dual NIC on eBay $25That sounds like a good build. Would you mind sharing the model # of the Intel dual NIC you used?
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Other than Supermicro. You can opt for these firewall purposed hardware. A router orgasm. 6 Ethernet ports.
You can find them on Aliexpress. About the same as a complete build of a Supermicro Atom board shipped.
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Compact-1U-router-server-firewall-server-with-MINI-ITX-Six-Gigabit-LANs-motherboard/583033075.html
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Intel-D525-1U-Firewall-server-Chassis-and-Motherboard-with-power-supply/733819792.html
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I use an Ivy Bridge system for my router. Initially I had an i3-3220, but changed it to an i5-3570 since I had it laying around and also it has AES-NI, which will be handy once 2.1 is out. The i3 system typically draws about 20w or so when not doing much. I am using a small ssd for storage and an 80+bronze 300w psu for it. It is a perfect little system. If you want to go cheaper there are options like the Pentium G1610 which is still 22nm Ivy Bridge based but a lot cheaper.
