Processor Selection - Custom 1U Build

hardingnick

Hi All, hope your all well.

I am in the middle of building a Custom 1U Pfsense unit for my custom rack.

I have plans to run the embedded version with 2 ssd's in raid 1.

Here is my current spec…

Motherboard - Gigabyte F2A78M-HD2
Intel quad gigabit server card - Dell YT674
RAM - 4gb but thinking of upping to 8gb?

I am now looking into buying a processor for this tomorrow, its a FM2/FM2+ socket, should i go for dual or quad core?

I have around 10 devices running on the network from TV's to phones, laptops etc, and 3 servers, one runs openvpn for 3 users only 1 connected at a time and one of the other machines host 2 business websites.

My connection is 150/80.

I plan to run squid, snort, and some other packages, will be new to this system so not entirely sure of the required spec i need? i plan to expand my network with more servers in the near future and dont want this unit running flat out all the time, would rather underload it than overload it.

Thanks in advance,

Nick Harding.

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hardingnick

Anyone? Getting desperate here. Obviously has to be AES-NI capable

Thanks in advance.

hardingnick

Small Update,

Have ordered a "Gelid Solutions Silence A Plus 28mm 1U Low Ultra Slim Profile AMD CPU Cooler" from ebay, from my measuring i should be 1-1.5mm below the lid of the chassis. I used an old FM2 (dead) processor as placement for measuring.

Still looking for advice on processor selection please,

Thanks, Nick.

tirsojrp

#1 - ignore raid 1 and use zfs.
#2 - Go for 8gb of ram
#3 - Use a low tpd CPU
#4 - Disable stuff you dont need and user lowest clock and ram possible for gpu.

hardingnick

Hi Tirsojrp, thanks for your reply.

1 - I thought running raid 1 and having a duplicated drive would be better for redundancy? Nagios will be monitoring this box at all times. What's the reason of choice for zfs?

2 - 8 gb it is then.

3 - was going to get a 65tdp cpu just don't know what spec, dual or quad core etc?

4 - spot on.

LostInIgnorance

@hardingnick:

1 - I thought running raid 1 and having a duplicated drive would be better for redundancy? Nagios will be monitoring this box at all times. What's the reason of choice for zfs?

ZFS is far better than the hardware based raid as it keeps better track of data rot and notifies the user. ZFS is used in FreeNAS and that's mainly where I started using it and becoming custom to the awesome functionality.

jgiannakas

You could easily max out your connection on a celeron hence a 65watt processor is way energy inefficient. I'm not familiar with AMDs offerings but a 15watt intel i3 cpu would already be an overkill for a 150gb connection. I would try to get something a bit more efficient if I were you.