Is an Intel D2500CC board still good for basic use?

oneleaf

Hello!
Been reading about pfsense and very interested in getting a box up and running with it to learn more about it. I do not need any advanced needs yet. I have a 100 Mbps internet connection and will have about a half dozen PC's and devices connected to a switch. I may do some content filtering later on. I assume I can do content filtering just for my daughter's PC pretty easily with pfsense?

I have the opportunity to pick up a D2500CC board for cheap. It is the old D2500 Intel board with two Intel NIC's that many people seem to have success with getting pfsense going on. However, most discussion about it was many years ago. Is it worth investing in an old motherboard? Luckily I have tons of spare DDR3 SODIMM RAM and an old SSD so I do not need to invest any more for the system other than a PicoPSU.

Just for sanity purposes, is there anything I am missing in my proposed setup? D2500CC with embedded atom CPU, 4gb SODIMM DDR3, a 60gig mSATA drive connected to an mSATA to SATA adapter, a PicoPSU, and a MiniITX case (M350).

Thanks for any advice!

kroko

From by "how i built my pfSense" YT bookmarks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-72kQ6cJEw , 30 May 2016
Just ask the guy in YT comments, although many things he says/does in the video hints that he would not be able to give super precise answers. But I think if he answers "it works flawlessly after half a year without reboots" - it suits your use case, doesn't it?

specs

Is it worth investing in an old motherboard?

and

Luckily I have tons of spare DDR3 SODIMM RAM and an old SSD so I do not need to invest any more for the system other than a PicoPSU.

… does not sound as investment. :) Just get some PSU to test it.

Even if turns out to be not what you expect (which I doubt, considering you will be using this as a basic router, having everything connected to switch(?!?)), having such setup gives you IMHO perfect opportunity to try, test, learn (and for this MOBO also - use) pfSense.

whosmatt

@oneleaf:

Just for sanity purposes, is there anything I am missing in my proposed setup? D2500CC with embedded atom CPU, 4gb SODIMM DDR3, a 60gig mSATA drive connected to an mSATA to SATA adapter, a PicoPSU, and a MiniITX case (M350).

Thanks for any advice!

Not missing anything except maybe the AC to DC 12V adapter you'll need to drive the PicoPSU. You should be fine with the rest of it. I have the M350 and a 60W PicoPSU running an AM1 mobo and Sempron 2650, 4GB DDR3 + USB 3.0 boot disk and USB 2.0 wireless adapter with a random 12V 4.5A power brick I had lying around. It's more than enough. That's not my pfSense system (it's a MythTV frontend) but your system will probably draw less power than that.

oneleaf

Thanks for the replies! I went ahead and got the motherboard and also the M350 case with a 90W PicoPSU and adapter. Looking forward to giving this a try!

Slojoe

I just built one of these about a month ago,
using 4gb usb onboard storage,works great.
I have a 30/5 mb through a VPN with no loss.
I recommend this as a good home router up to 150mb.

VAMike

I'm sure it'll work, but I'd need an incredibly good price to pick it over an apu2 (which is faster, has aes-ni, has virtualization extensions, has 3 NICs, and still draws less power).