Can a consumer motherboard work for 24x7 for 5 years?
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Currently we are using a Jetway Atom D525 board in a pfSense box. It has no AES-NI. It is doing NAT/firewall/FreeRADIUS and the access points are doing WiFi.
When I am looking at 8th generation i3 or i5 which has 4 cores or 6 cores, I did know that it can support snort as IDS for up to 600Mbps or 1000Mbps from the knowledge of Security Onion. If we can use them for NAT/VLAN/pfblockNG and other firewall rules/snort/FreeRADIUS for up to 100-120 wired and wireless devices after 5 years, it should be good and power saving.
But currently there is no industrial or server/workstation motherboard for 8th generation i3/i5 in the market as I knew. Can we use a consumer board such as ASRock Z370m-itx/ac to work for 24x7 for 5 years?
By the way, to me, c3758 based board is also not cheap if it is comparing to 8th generation i3/i5.
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I've had very little trouble with the gigabyte ultra-durable motherboards, especially the ones with conformant sealing on the boards and all solid capacitors. I would get a very good power supply that is not always running on the ragged edge of its capacity since power supplies are often the weak link. But yeah. A really reliable consumer board can go 5 or 15 years. Get a good one and you will get bored of it before it breaks.
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I've had very little trouble with the gigabyte ultra-durable motherboards, especially the ones with conformant sealing on the boards and all solid capacitors. I would get a very good power supply that is not always running on the ragged edge of its capacity since power supplies are often the weak link. But yeah. A really reliable consumer board can go 5 or 15 years. Get a good one and you will get bored of it before it breaks.
Your post gave me another board model, Gigabyte Z370N WIFI in its ultra durable series.
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With pfsense you probably have no particular need for wifi on the board.
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With pfsense you probably have no particular need for wifi on the board.
But most of the mini-itx motherboards for 7th/8th generation intel core cpus have wifi on board. Only way to do is disable the wifi function on board.
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So long as you aren't paying extra, it is cool. I'm using consumer boards ranging from over 10 years old to brand new.
I prefer having VGA onboard. I'm weird. Most people like server boards.
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So long as you aren't paying extra, it is cool. I'm using consumer boards ranging from over 10 years old to brand new.
I prefer having VGA onboard. I'm weird. Most people like server boards.
There are some HDMI to VGA adapters.
It need to wait 1-2 years for industrial/server/workstation boards from the first newest generation core cpu released. But the newest i3/i5 has the cpu power near e3-12xx v5/v6 now.
About 15-16 years ago, a branded desktop computer was used as a very busy ftp server 24x7 on FreeBSD and its motherboard lasted 1 year only. Of course a customized OEM motherboard for a branded desktop computer is cheaper and worse than a DIY desktop motherboard of a famous motherboard brand.
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It used to be that low wattage server boards were just too weak for me. Now it's a little different. I could use an atom board, and I do in some places. Look at your uses and see what you need more. Power or low power.
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Currently we are using a Jetway Atom D525 board in a pfSense box. It has no AES-NI. It is doing NAT/firewall/FreeRADIUS and the access points are doing WiFi.
And if AES-NI will be not really a must be, you could use it perhaps for a longer time I am pretty sure, now
you are perhaps pressed during the next ~12 month to change to something that comes sorted with AES-NI,
but is it so wrong?Here in Germany many peoples were using Alix boards for ~5 -6 years and there were able to get them as
a bundle with case, psu and CF card for something around ~250 € as today 125 €.125 € / 5 * 12 month = ~2,10 € per month! As today the APU2C4 bundle are for around ~220 €
might be running also perhaps for 5 years, 220 € / 5 * 12 month = ~3,70 per month.Buy the way I have seen boards from the community electronic dump place that are running until today
and brand new hardcore systems dying young and early, there is no guarantee for us all how long
something will be used or must be changed. So no one is able to answer your question really I mean.By the way, to me, c3758 based board is also not cheap if it is comparing to 8th generation i3/i5.
For sure not cheap, but it is offering AES-NI, low power QAT, DPDK, 8C/8T and silent or nearly silent.
….and all solid capacitors.
Not talking about the rest, but solid caps are really nice to have, I prefer such caps really! if one is blown up
you could resolver them and mostly or very often you will be able to use that board for a long time. If the liquid
filled caps are blowing up mostly the liquid inside is spreading over other hardware parts or solder points and
then this will be getting the real damage of the board.I prefer having VGA onboard. I'm weird. Most people like server boards.
And the IPMI ports let us say from the Supermicro Intel Atom C2000, C3000 or Xeon
D-15xx boards are not nice too?
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@BlueKobold:
And the IPMI ports let us say from the Supermicro Intel Atom C2000, C3000 or Xeon
D-15xx boards are not nice too?If you don't need IPMI, it's just a waste of electricity. In a low power board the OOB management computer is a significant fraction of the overall power consumption.