PC Engines APU2C2 or APU2C4
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What would warrant me to get the 4GB APU2C over the 2GB? I'm planning to buy two of these. I'll be using one on my primary home and the only services there would be the default ones plus squid and lightsquid. I have just a handful of computers on that network as it is just a home network. A simple Synology NAS that streams over the network and some media servers here and there. Since my ISP is using double-NAT, I'm limited to accessing my internal devices from the Internet but if there's a chance I can try and setup a VPN with pfsense.
The second one will be used on my secondary home with just 1-3 PC's that connect to the network. I'll be using the same services here. The ISP on this home is giving my a public IP so I think I can setup VPN here.
So with that said, will I get away using 2GB for both homes? Or one 4GB and one 2GB? What do you guys think?
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Hi,
my APU 2C4 reports Memory usage 9% of 4045 MiB with cron, openvpn-client-export, Service_Watchdog, squid, suricata, /tmp RAM Disk Size 512MB and /var RAM Disk Size 1024MB, 3 active OpenVPN connects :D
-teddy
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I got the 2C4 version for two reasons.
1. I was buying from a UK supplier to avoid import delays etc. and it was only £10 or so more expensive, seemed silly not to.
2. In theory I could install ESXi on it, which I might try.I think pfsense is very unlikely to use the RAM, but then again this is likely to last a long time and who knows what useful packages may come along that use more RAM.
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That's what I was exactly thinking. I mean, for a difference of just $13 (direct from PC Engines) I think there'd be little reason not to go with the 4GB. But then again I'll be buying two so that's already a $26 difference! I'm still on the edge, argh!
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Don't forget that the apu2c4 also has intels i210 nic vs the apu2c2 which has intels i211 nic. The i210 is a low end server class nic with four ques vs only 2 ques for the i211 nic.
I think it's is definately worth the extra
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If I understood that correctly, the i210 is better than the i211? You would think that the higher the number the better.
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yep thats correct the i210 is the better nic, especially for pfsense. Your right though, when i first looked into nic's i also thought the i211 would be better simply because of the higher number. How much real world difference it'l make i don't know.
i've tested my apu2c4 with pfsense 2.3 with iperf and got a throughput of lan to wan bandwidth of 595 megabites per second. (thats with the default configureation) which i am happy with having a 150 mb down 10 up connection.
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Gotcha! I'm sold with the 4GB then. Thanks for the help.
