Intel Mini-ITX Atom 8-core Hardware Build Recipe Available Here

jawz101

fyi- if you want the CPU fan the p/n is

Specifications

Mfr Part Number: SNK-C0054A4L
Application: Motherboard - X9SCV-QV4/X9SCV-Q
Socket Type: Socket G2 (rPGA 988B)
CPU Support: Intel 2nd Generation Core i7/ i5/ i3, Pentium, Celeron Mobile Processors
Fan Speed: 6500 RPM (4-pin PWM Controls)
Noise: 36.6 dBA
Dimensions: 60.0 x 60.0 x 31.5 mm

http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B005NJQ6T2

I had an idle temp of around 30 Celsius but when I did anything it would quickly ramp up to 60-70 degrees. Now I'm consistently down to 27-30 Celsius.

I have no idea how the temp got soo high so the $25 expensive fan was worth it to me. They must've given me the mobo one of you probably returned lol.

When I emailed Supermicro they said not to use the mouting bracket- it's the same metal piece underneath the mobo already. You could probably get a 4 pin fan of the same size and slap fan on the CPU but this has a metal case enclosing the heatsink and the fan sits on top of that plate. I guess so it doesn't melt from my scorched cpu.

The case I used was Morex 5689 Locking Mini-ITX Case With 60W PSU. It's an ok case but I don't think I'd recommend it unless you want to save having to look for a PSU as well. It does come with a wall-mount bracket and it locks to the bracket if you were using it for something commercial or as a carputer or something. I wouldn't buy it again for home use, necesarily, because the case takes 11 screws to remove. 4 of which you'd have to use the key to get to- thus, it's made for physical security I suppose.

les_garten

I have a question about the ethernet buffer issues here. If you have 16 or 32gb of RAM, do you still have the problems and need to send the command to the kernal for the buffers?

Sir Loin

@les_garten:

I have a question about the ethernet buffer issues here. If you have 16 or 32gb of RAM, do you still have the problems and need to send the command to the kernal for the buffers?

IIRC, it is especially required if you have a lot of memory.

I have a question about the ethernet buffer issues here.

pfSense is based on FreeBSD and the kernel was historical growing up as the basis of the FreeBSD
system and in former days or before a long time, this kernel space was more then big in size and
sufficient enough to handle the former Internet connection and hardware given NIC speed.

But now together with the actual hardware and todays Internet link speed from something around of
1 GBit/s at the WAN port, it comes to more or less problems. But while FreeBSD is able to handle a real
huge amount of system memory (RAM), the kernel space or memory can be freed by high up or increase
the mbuf size that there it will be able to reach better results.

If you have 16 or 32gb of RAM, do you still have the problems and need to send the command to the kernal for the buffers?

Yep, with 16 GB of RAM you will be able to set up the mbuf size to 1000000 or higher. In some rarely cases
it would also be helping to shorten this size to 65.000 or less, but not even! But this is not all about the RAM
you could also assign a higher amount of memory to Squid or for other things. The packet filter, the IP forwarding parts, and even NAT (part of pf, but run at a different phase) all hit the memory system.
It's likely not that your CPU can't keep up, it's more that your memory system is saturated.

As I see it right the real angle point here is that the PPPoE part is using only a single CPU core and
if this CPU or SoC is not really strong enough you will be getting lower speed or plain throughput at
the WAN interface. Tis could be changing with netmap-fwd in the next release of pfSense and/or
perhaps with Intel QuickAssist in version 2.3 or even later with much luck something that is called
DPDK over the AVX/AVX2 CPU registers, that might be speeding up the entire Layer3 packet forwarding
part massively for us. I will see with what the developers are surprising us in the final version 2.3

AR15USR

Sir Loin,

What SSD are you using with this build?

And how exactly did you install pfSense? Through the Serial port, usb stick etc?.. Which Serial cable did you use?

Sir Loin

I am using a Samsung 850 Evo 250GB. But any SATA SSD (and probably any size over 32GB) will do. I installed though a USB stick. I don't have a serial cable.

xman111

how much better would this be than the RCC-VE 2440? it will cost me about $150 more. I run open vpn have quite a few computers and devices in my house and have 100/10 Internet.

AR15USR

Thanks for the build details Sir Loin. I built the same setup off of your recipe and its working great. Just need some screws to install the fans and I'll be set.

trumee

@Sir:

The A1SRi-2758f works with either the 4-pin connector or the 20-pin connector, but not both at the same time (per motherboard manual chapter 1-6 on page 1-12). This power supply works with this motherboard. You will need a 4-pin power cable extender. Additionally, you will need a Serial ATA 15 Pin Female to LP4 Female Power Cable to connect power to the hard drive or SSD of your choice, if you are not using only USB memory stick for boot or storage. Alternatively, this power brick + picoPSU combo will work and has the hard drive power connector built in.

Just want to point out that the SATA 15 pin female to LP4 connector is injection molded one and is a disaster waiting to happen. Its a bad choice and we need another recommendation.

Sir Loin

@trumee:

@Sir:

The A1SRi-2758f works with either the 4-pin connector or the 20-pin connector, but not both at the same time (per motherboard manual chapter 1-6 on page 1-12). This power supply works with this motherboard. You will need a 4-pin power cable extender. Additionally, you will need a Serial ATA 15 Pin Female to LP4 Female Power Cable to connect power to the hard drive or SSD of your choice, if you are not using only USB memory stick for boot or storage. Alternatively, this power brick + picoPSU combo will work and has the hard drive power connector built in.

Just want to point out that the SATA 15 pin female to LP4 connector is injection molded one and is a disaster waiting to happen. Its a bad choice and we need another recommendation.

Time to go find one that is safe. Does anyone have a suggestion?

Cables 1 please scroll through the side
Cables 2 custom cable production too
Cables 3 one to two sleeved
Cables 3 one to one sleeved

Would be my personal choice.
NZXT CB-43SATA 7.87" 4-Pin Molex to 3 SATA Cable
Link and variant one
Link and variant two

Sir Loin

Thanks Frank. Looks like these cables are of very good quality. But the Molex end needs to be female. I remember it was. Not easy to find one with female end.

Downloadski

I had also hard time sourcing a cable. I ended up cutting non needed parts from an coverter cable with like 6 plugs.
But that is also the molded type :(

trumee

How about this one, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200469&cm_re=startech_sata_splitter--12-200-469--Product

Sir Loin

@trumee:

How about this one, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200469&cm_re=startech_sata_splitter--12-200-469--Product

This one looks like the bad kind, cabled are molded over with plastic.

@trumee:

How about this one, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200469&cm_re=startech_sata_splitter--12-200-469--Product

trumee, please try to insert the word "sleeved" in your search about that art of cables to get a better hit or result.

trumee

I did some testing to find out what speed i am getting on the LAN side. My network is as follows

C2758 Router<>LACP LAGG<>Zyxel Switch<>LACP LAGG<>FreeBSD server (Supermicro X10SL7-F igb NIC)

I started a iperf server on the router and a client on the FreeBSD server. Unfortunately, i could only get 560Mbps.

Any idea why i am getting poor speeds. Do i need to enable anything else to get better speed (like powerD, jumbo frames)?

athurdent

pfSense is optimized to route traffic I think. If you measure throughput WAN <-> LAN you should get close to Gigabit Speed. At least that's what I got when I put a HTTP Server on the WAN side and downloaded some big files to LAN. You can even have Snort active on WAN while doing that, IIRC.

I started a iperf server on the router and a client on the FreeBSD server. Unfortunately, i could only get 560Mbps.

I would more try out a test likes, from an iPerf client to an iPerf Server through the pfSense box to see what is
shown then. Perhaps from 192.xxx to 172.xxx that would show up more the routing capabilities on the LAN
side as I see it right.

Any idea why i am getting poor speeds. Do i need to enable anything else to get better speed (like powerD, jumbo frames)?

Not really , but please read the lines above about a testing procedure, it is not really important what program
you will use likes iPerf or NetIO but this both would be on the other hand the two programs with all other are
able to reproduce the test and so things can be compared against each other or made results can be confirmed
by other what is perhaps also nice for someone who was doing a test.

The other thing is, if you install pfSense (fresh and full install) and configuring only the WAN & LAN part
it might be really and only showing up the performance of the board & NICs & pfSense it self, but with installed
packets, other activated services and other running features this might be then not really the performance of
the board and pfSense only. Others may thinking different about that, but I see it more in that direction.

trumee

I combined this with this to replace the molex-sata connector.