PfSense with Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V

ak

About to order all the bits - separate thread asking about SSD vs HDD. So my shortlist for this board is

Motherboard - this one!
8GB DDR3L Kingston RAM (single stick)
60Gb SSD Kingston V300
MiniBox M350 Case (http://linitx.com/product/minibox-m350-universal-miniitx-enclosure-black/12488)
80W pico psu (http://linitx.com/product/minibox-12v-80w-picopsu80/11459)
FSP 60W 12V power adapter.

Willing to get 2x8Gb RAM - would this make a significant difference if I am planning to use Squid, Snort, OpenVPN client, and possible ClamAV? I ask about 16Gb as I read someone try tis and 16Gb was recognised (though Gigabyte specs says 8Gb).

Anything wrong with my choice - or changes I should make?

Wish list additions:

LCD for status display - but can't find anything reasonably priced.
Mini PCIe wifi (at least b/g/n simultaneously) card that works with 2.2 - think this board can only accept half length.

svenvg93

Hey,

I want this Board for my new Pfsense build.

I have one question for the owners.

Are the two Realtek nic good enough for a 120/12 MB line.

MikeV7896

This should answer that question. :) This is bare pfSense, no VPN, no proxy, no anything else.

That's about my connection limits (advertised as 100/10), so it (pfSense with this motherboard) can likely go higher. But my connection can't.

JWTech

Just joined the community to give my own two bits on this topic.

I purchased the J1900N-D3V, it came with the F2 bios, and pfSense booted fine with a Nano USB.

Seems to be running okay, operates at 28C average, iperf gets 870Mb/s with CPU below 5%, and hasn't dropped or erred a single packet thus far (according to the logs).

Only issue, is that with certain applications I get a random stutter. Skype for instance, will occasionally stop sending audio/video for a few seconds without actually dropping the call and while continuing to receive audio/video.

I've noticed similar problems with Youtube played over an Xbox, while everything else seems to be fine, including an active Teamspeak server.

My first assumption was to change the firewall optimization to conservative. Sadly this did not seem to resolve the issue.

Anyone have this issue on their installs? My next change will be switching the F2 bios with the F3 mentioned in this thread.

develox

Hi,

I was thinking of building a pfSense box with the ga-j1900n-d3v myself too (or, at worst, with the j1900-based Asrock mobos).

For those that already have these in hands (or anyone who knows), could you please help me understand whether this would be a good fit as an addition (most probably within an Antec ISK110 case) ?

http://www.itinstock.com/intel-expi9404ptg2l20-pro1000-pt-quad-port-gigabit-hh-network-adapter-card-14711-p.asp

Thanks in advance
Peppe

countspongebob

Given the bad rap this board has gotten on esp on the bios front… thought I would say something positive.

I just also bought and replaced an old failed motherboard with the GA-J1900N-D3V. Ordered it via Amazon, put a 2x4GB memory kit in it.
I had to disable the UEFI boot options, but I loaded 2.2.2 64bit on it without an issues once I did.

Note that the board came with F3 already installed on it, so I was able to skip some of the pain others have reported.

No stuttering like JWTech reported, but I'll keep an eye on it.

-Bob

countspongebob

Just a followup a few days in… it's still working very well. I was certainly nervous about this board given the discussion but it has been working really well, no issues at all.

-Bob

Warren Jones

They released a new Bios (F4) this month for "Improve USB device compatibility". Has anyone tried it yet? I had to go the MS-DOS Bootable Flash Drive route just to get to F3, and am leery of trying for F4.

kipTry

Finally, do you recommend to use GA-C1037UN-EU (rev2) http://es.gigabyte.com/products/page/mb/ga-c1037un-eurev_20/overview/?

lastb0isct

I just got my board and I love it!! I am having difficulty with one thing though. Online gaming is giving me a tough time.

I am getting latency spikes while i play. Does anyone have experience with slowness using these boards and gaming? I was trying to tweak settings, but haven't been able to find anything that fixes it.

Brutos

@kipTry:

Finally, do you recommend to use GA-C1037UN-EU (rev2) http://es.gigabyte.com/products/page/mb/ga-c1037un-eurev_20/overview/?

Am currently using this board and it works fine no issues at all.

Cloon

What is the power comsumption of this board or the Gigabyte GA-C1037UN-EU running pfSense? Has anyone done any measurements?

qatrick

I bought this board yesterday. Bios F3 was already installed. Installation went smooth, but it can't set IP over DHCP. Latest version of pfsense 2.2.4
Do you guys know any solution, beside adding PCI card, i dont have enough space :-\

qatrick

@Cloon:

What is the power comsumption of this board or the Gigabyte GA-C1037UN-EU running pfSense? Has anyone done any measurements?

About 10-15W for ga-j1900n-d3v

glenewhittenberggmail.co

Just got mine yesterday from http://www.mitxpc.com/ Model# EKGBJ1900M350 I got the 4GB RAM instead of the 2GB. Separately I got a Patriot Blaze 60GB SSD for it as well. Mine came with the F4 BIOS and I was able to boot on USB for nano flash setup as well as boot from external USB CD/DVD for full install on the SSD. Only changes I made to BIOS was turn off splash, turn off Vitalization, and disable Audio. Oh ya, using 2.2.4

I setup a test network on my bench with LAN side having my PC and 1000mb switch, and the WAN side having my NAS and a 1000mb switch. I was able to get 80MB throughput with a PC to NAS samba copy of a 3.4GB ISO. Copying it back from the NAS to PC was also 80MB. CPU got to 33% on both runs.

I did the same copy just using a switch, and no router, between the PC and NAS and I get 113MB. This tells me the bottleneck is not the PC or NAS NICs, Cables, or Switches. With the CPU being at 33% as well on the router I am thinking the Realtek NICs in the router.

I am going to setup a VPN on my bench and test this as well. May not get to that for a few days though.

My goal is to turn this into a UTM.

Do you guys know any solution, beside adding PCI card, i dont have enough space

If there is no space how you want to add a card then? Startech are producing PCI and PCIe expander
cases perhaps this would then a choice for you.

qatrick

@BlueKobold:

Do you guys know any solution, beside adding PCI card, i dont have enough space

If there is no space how you want to add a card then? Startech are producing PCI and PCIe expander
cases perhaps this would then a choice for you.

I don't. I was thinking about some config tweaks. Many people had this issue. Im wondering if anybody was able to solve this problem.

stephenw10

Where were you measuring that CPU usage? The figure on the dashboard combines all the cores. You need to use the command line to see the individual core usage:

top -SH

You will probably find one core is at 100%.

Steve

glenewhittenberggmail.co

Does pfsense not use all the Cores?

glenewhittenberggmail.co

top-SH show two of the four cores at 100% idle during the transfer. The other two cores bounce around form 20% to 80% idle during the transfer. So the average would be 75% idle, or 25% usage. seeing how i am not able to nail down the numbers on the working cores I think the dashboard lower 30's% is fairly accurate. Am i missing something? Does pfSense use all cores?