Intel NUC (4x4 motherboard)
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Quite true regarding the half size slot, some of these nucs do have a sata port but still tricky.
These nucs are great I admit and the cpus seem powerful enough but they are energy efficient design so performance will be down compared to a normal desktop cpu, but again as you said the case/expansion option and overall cost factor are major.
They would need an intel nuc with 2 intel nics and the newer haswell core i3/i5s with AES to boot for it to be a solid option.
A few SFF systems do exist with 2 nics and similar options but I find something always missing or wrong like no AES support or the nics are realtek… realtek just seems evil since its always default option ;)
I think give it a year or 2 and maybe a 20-30watt intel nuc or other sff system like with aes and hopefully the right expansion options or dual intel nics arrives, either that or a decent router with the right options!
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Whilst the low power processors are less capable than the desktop versions they are still very capable. I'd be amazed if any if them couldn't do 100Mbps OpenVPN. Also I'd hope to see power consumption drop lower than 20W given what's already possible:
http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/8217/fluffy2-59-watt-high-end-desktop-computer.htmlSteve
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I might also add that the whole setup uses less that 30 Watts as measured by the UPS and is
totallynear silent.This is what is on the UPS:
1xNUC (120GB mSate, 16GB 1333 MHz DDR3)
1xGS116E Switch
1xGS108PEv2 POE Switch (load: 2xPolycom IP 335 VOIP phones, 1xAXIS M3007 Camera, 1xEnGenius EAP350 WiFI AP)
1xLinksys PAP2-T VOIP ATA.what kind of throughput are you getting? thinking of doing that for my home setup but not sure how it will handle torrenting
I did it more as a hobby and security than for heavy load, speed tests show 84Mbs down 39Mbs up. FIOS on demand TV is probably the heaviest load (it uses IP and not QAM) and in our home we can have 2 HD streams without any noticeable affect.
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In an amusing turn of events, I set the VirtualBox VM for pfSense to 1 core instead of 2 cores. And got an ipsec throughput improvement from 100mbit to 200mbit. Shouldn't that work in reverse? :)
Anyway, clearly VirtualBox is not the best at this. Would be nice to see this running on the native NUC hardware when the support is available.
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Whilst the low power processors are less capable than the desktop versions they are still very capable. I'd be amazed if any if them couldn't do 100Mbps OpenVPN. Also I'd hope to see power consumption drop lower than 20W given what's already possible:
http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/8217/fluffy2-59-watt-high-end-desktop-computer.htmlSteve
Yeah I agree, I was looking into mobile cpus even….
But I quickly find always hardware issues like realtek nics and less expansion slots or options.
I would love one day for someone to run some full test on a 20-30watt pfsense box under AES/VPN speeds and output.
I still feel for overall reliability if you got a pfsense box running 24/7 a xeon/server base pc will be better with its ECC server ram and an SSD and intel nics to boot and in some ways you kinda loose power efficiency but gain reliability. Cost wise you can get servers cheap off ebay usually just as cheap if not cheaper then a power efficiency setup.
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I still feel for overall reliability if you got a pfsense box running 24/7 a xeon/server base pc will be better with its ECC server ram and an SSD and intel nics to boot and in some ways you kinda loose power efficiency but gain reliability.
Sure, until you add so many NICs and CPU cores that you start hitting bugs in the igb driver and your system panics. :)
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I still feel for overall reliability if you got a pfsense box running 24/7 a xeon/server base pc will be better with its ECC server ram and an SSD and intel nics to boot and in some ways you kinda loose power efficiency but gain reliability.
Sure, until you add so many NICs and CPU cores that you start hitting bugs in the igb driver and your system panics. :)
Does this really happen with pfsense ?
I had no idea… was considering to order off a nice 4way quad nic card and perhaps a xeon server !
Are you suggesting a dual core and less nics like 2 are more reliable then ?
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I still feel for overall reliability if you got a pfsense box running 24/7 a xeon/server base pc will be better with its ECC server ram and an SSD and intel nics to boot and in some ways you kinda loose power efficiency but gain reliability.
Sure, until you add so many NICs and CPU cores that you start hitting bugs in the igb driver and your system panics. :)
Does this really happen with pfsense ?
I had no idea… was considering to order off a nice 4way quad nic card and perhaps a xeon server !
Are you suggesting a dual core and less nics like 2 are more reliable then ?
Yes, I just posted about this last week.
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,69486.0.html
A quad-core Xeon + a quad-port NIC is probably fine out of the box. An 8-core , or a quad with 8 NICs? Maybe not. A quad with a dozen NICs, well, personal experience… The issues can be overcome, you'll just need to enter the BIOS and set your system to run on a single core until you've made the necessary changes.
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thanks good to hear !
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Any use any of this hardware for expanding your port capabilities? Considering using a Tiny Box or Laptop with single port.