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    Best Hardware for home use?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
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    • J Offline
      jasonlitka
      last edited by

      @priller:

      @Jason:

      http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2758F.cfm

      Fair warning, 2.1.1-PRERELEASE is required if you want any working NICs and there will only be (2) working USB ports because USB 3.0 doesn't work yet…

      I just built my new system with that board.  Really nice!!  Excellent firewall platform.

      IPMI make it soooo easy to install the OS.

      I had to hook up a USB optical drive to install. Mounting the ISO through the IPMI kept failing when trying to mount during the boot process.

      How hot is yours running?  Are there any fans in your case?

      I can break anything.

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      • D Offline
        dolomite792
        last edited by

        My home internet speed since its a WISP is rather slow at times (varies from 4-12mbits) which is why I am interested in the squid setup.  My budget is around $200 and I want to keep the power consumption low.  Which is why the apuc1 board is really appealing to me.  I'm not worried about the fastest gigabit ethernet speeds, more for security, experimentation, and observation as well as something that's better than a regular soho router with terrible security.  I have played with DDWRT and openwrt, mikrotik.  I've used pfsense in the past but its come to my attention again at how powerful and useful it is and so I am really interested in investing in a good router.  I love the idea of building something myself and being able to interchange parts and pieces to suit whatever I need in my home setup.

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        • K Offline
          Keljian
          last edited by

          @dolomite792:

          My home internet speed since its a WISP is rather slow at times (varies from 4-12mbits) which is why I am interested in the squid setup.  My budget is around $200 and I want to keep the power consumption low.

          Do you have any parts you can put in the box (or even a case/power supply) that you have lying around?

          It's very cheap to put together a basic haswell celeron/pentium box with 2-4 gig of ram, dual intel pt/1000 nic with a cheap ssd (you don't need a screaming fast one for a home connection).

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          • P Offline
            priller
            last edited by

            @Jason:

            I had to hook up a USB optical drive to install. Mounting the ISO through the IPMI kept failing when trying to mount during the boot process.

            How hot is yours running?  Are there any fans in your case?

            If you were failing to a mountroot>  prompt,  then you need to set "set kern.cam.boot_delay=10000" as noted here: 
            https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#Booting_from_USB

            It's just a timing issue mounting the remote ISO via IPMI.

            Once I did that, it mounted the ISO file on my desktop just fine.

            –

            My board is in a M350 case with a single 40mm fan in the front panel position.  Usually runs in the 41 - 43C range.

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            • J Offline
              jasonlitka
              last edited by

              @priller:

              @Jason:

              I had to hook up a USB optical drive to install. Mounting the ISO through the IPMI kept failing when trying to mount during the boot process.

              How hot is yours running?  Are there any fans in your case?

              If you were failing to a mountroot>  prompt,  then you need to set "set kern.cam.boot_delay=10000" as noted here: 
              https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#Booting_from_USB

              It just a timing issue mounting the remote ISO via IPMI.

              Once I did that, it mounted the ISO file on my desktop just fine.

              –

              My board is in a M350 case with a single 40mm fan in the front panel position.  Usually runs in the 41 - 43C range.

              Good info, I'll keep that setting in mind.

              I'm using a M350 as well but no fan.  Temps are at 46C while idle.  Based on your numbers I don't know that the front fan actually does much.  That's kind of what I expected since it doesn't blow at the CPU.  I briefly set a 40mm fan on top of the heat sink and the temp dropped to 26C within a minute or two so I might try and figure out how to attach it there.

              I can break anything.

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              • P Offline
                priller
                last edited by

                Jason ….

                I ordered another top plate (fan mounting bracket)  for the M350 and a second fan.  Assuming that a fan in the front position will fit over the CPU,  and I move the existing one to the back position .... Should the front one over the CPU blow down and the rear one up (exhaust)?  Or both as exhaust?

                Thoughts?

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                • J Offline
                  jasonlitka
                  last edited by

                  @Jason:

                  I'm using a M350 as well but no fan.  Temps are at 46C while idle.  Based on your numbers I don't know that the front fan actually does much.  That's kind of what I expected since it doesn't blow at the CPU.  I briefly set a 40mm fan on top of the heat sink and the temp dropped to 26C within a minute or two so I might try and figure out how to attach it there.

                  An update on this.  As expected, when I added a 40mm fan to the front of the case as an intake, it dropped idle from 46C to ~41C.  Once I made a little duct with cardboard to angle the air towards the heatsink the idle temp dropped to 33C.

                  EDIT 1: I made a few adjustments to the duct and now I'm down to 30C.  That's only 4C off from the fan directly on the heatsink, and it's much quieter, so I'm going with this.

                  EDIT 2: Pictures of my quick fan duct.  I was originally going to whip something up on a 3D printer but then I figured, "manila folder"! http://imgur.com/a/RTRD9

                  @priller:

                  Jason ….

                  I ordered another top plate (fan mounting bracket)  for the M350 and a second fan.  Assuming that a fan in the front position will fit over the CPU,  and I move the existing one to the back position .... Should the front one over the CPU blow down and the rear one up (exhaust)?  Or both as exhaust?

                  Thoughts?

                  If you're going to use two fans I'd suggest the front spot as an inlet and the rear-left (furthest from the CPU) as an exhaust.  I don't think this case and board really needs two fans though.  The one I've got installed and rigged as above seems to have done the trick, and to be honest, the temp without a fan is still way lower than my DN2800MT (idle @ 57-58C).

                  I can break anything.

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                  • S Offline
                    Seth
                    last edited by

                    What case options are there for this board.

                    Thanks

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                    • J Offline
                      jasonlitka
                      last edited by

                      My first pick for Mini-ITX boards is the M350.

                      http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-enclosure

                      I can break anything.

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                      • P Offline
                        priller
                        last edited by

                        Ya, the M350 is what I went with.

                        The SuperMicro case looks pretty decent, too:  http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/Mini-ITX/101/SC101i.cfm

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                        • J Offline
                          jasonlitka
                          last edited by

                          @priller:

                          Ya, the M350 is what I went with.

                          The SuperMicro case looks pretty decent, too:  http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/Mini-ITX/101/SC101i.cfm

                          The reason I didn't go with that one is that the memory blocks the airflow from the 60mm fan when used with the Rangeley board (and even if it didn't, it would blow the wrong direction across the heat sink).  I wasn't sure if I was going to use a fan, but if I needed one, I wanted to make sure it would actually work.

                          EDIT: Pics added in my previous post.

                          I can break anything.

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                          • E Offline
                            elikxir
                            last edited by

                            http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4747#ov

                            pfsense.png
                            pfsense.png_thumb

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