New Build Listed: What am I missing?

arrdoggsxne

I am looking to put together a low power consumption build for home use. Internet speed is 150/10 and I am looking to run a VPN (OpenVPN) and also allow for room to grow in features.

I have put together the following from research on this forum:

Asrock J3355B-ITX $55
(Used) Intel I340-T4 NIC ~$60
PicoPSU-80 w/ 60w power adapter $35
8GB memory ~65
Cooler Master Elite 110 case $35

This totals to $250. What am I forgetting?

Is my PSU size correct?

The J3355B-ITX has the correct PCIE slot, right?

Also, I am also looking hard at the SG-3100 unit. Any thoughts or comparison?

Finally, I am not thrilled with the gigantic 110 case but cannot find anything else that will accommodate the Intel NIC and the price is right. Please let me know if there is something else out there.

Thank you

Grimson

I'd suggest an SSD. 32GB should be more than enough, unless you want to do squid caching, then go for something larger.

As for the case, I use the Silverstone ML9, you'll need a low profile NIC for it. There is also the Fractal Design Node 202 which looks quite nice too, but all of them are rather large. If you really want to self build and go small look for a board that has 2 Intel ports integrated then there are a lot of nice slim cases available.

arrdoggsxne

@Grimson:

I'd suggest an SSD. 32GB should be more than enough, unless you want to do squid caching, then go for something larger.

As for the case, I use the Silverstone ML9, you'll need a low profile NIC for it. There is also the Fractal Design Node 202 which looks quite nice too, but all of them are rather large. If you really want to self build and go small look for a board that has 2 Intel ports integrated then there are a lot of nice slim cases available.

This is good info. I had looked at using a USB flash drive to boot from and then use a RAM disk but am not opposed to a cheap SSD.

Thanks

whosmatt

@arrdoggsxne:

I had looked at using a USB flash drive to boot from and then use a RAM disk but am not opposed to a cheap SSD.

Thanks

If you're gonna boot from USB flash drive, might as well use 2 and take advantage of ZFS mirroring of the root pool. If you're like me you probably already have a couple that will work lying around anyway. Also it's dirt simple to move pfSense to different storage thanks to the monolithic config file if you decide to go SSD in the future.