Building my pfSence Router - Please, Help chose the Hardware for my build - Thank You!

Aryeduino

Hi All,

I am stepping up with the build for my pfSence Router and I have just went online to build my mini-ITX machine for that.

Please help me with understanding if the following will be OK to buy
Motherboard: Gigabyte B560I AORUS PRO AX

It has on board Wifi as well - would I be able to use it with the pfSence? is it OK for the build? it supports 32GB and I am getting 16GB for starts and if needed I will buy another DDR4 chip for it ( I will be planning to use sniffing plugins and i was told that I would need a big RAM for that, so I am starting with 16GB DDR4)

Also I have already bought a PCIe Card with 4 NICS to be the main Ethernet on this motherboard. Intel Ethernet Server Adapter I350-T4 - would the above motherboard support this card?
I am not sure that I am fully understand how to use the NIC on the Board as well as the 4 NICS on my PCIe Card and both of Wi-Fi on the Motherboard, But I want to believe that the OS will recognize all of them and I will be able to set each and everyone of them they way that I want, Having 5 NICS and 2 Wi-Fi interfaces.

I am going with an Intel i5 CPU Intel Core i5 11400 / 1200 Tray is it OK? and I was given this Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP as a FAN for it, Since I am going with a Mini-ITX case SilverStone SUGO SG13 White/Black Case any recommendations how to make it best for this build if any? I want to make sure that it would be clear from dust as much as I can. And the reason I went with it is that it supports an ATX Power Supply that I can get everywhere.

As mentioned above I am going with Corsair CMK16GX4M1E3200C16 DDR 4 16G/3200 I hope that this is a good choice to make.

I am also looking to buy an ADSL modem that I will use for this build - not a router-bridged solution - any recommendations?

I really would be happy to get your assistance on this build and I want to start building my pfSence ASAP and I will need your professional assistance chosing the right hardware for my build.

Thank you!
Arye

AndyRH

You will have more CPU than you can use, not a bad thing. There is 1 PCIe slot so the NIC will fit.
Depending on what you will be doing 4-8 GB RAM is plenty.
You may be able to use the built in WiFi, but pfSense is not so good with being an AP and most will recommend against it.
If pfSense detects the on-board NIC it will be nice should your ISP decide to give you more than 1Gb.

How you allocate the NICs is up to you. You can use separate ports instead of VLANs to divide your network, Main, Guest, IoT... Some of this will depend on the type of switch or switches you have.

JKnott

@aryeduino

Last year, I went with a Qotom mini PC, as described in my sig. I'm quite happy with it and it uses a lost less power than a desktop PC. It takes up a lot less space too.

johnpoz

@aryeduino said in Building my pfSence Router - Please, Help chose the Hardware for my build - Thank You!:

Gigabyte B560I AORUS PRO AX

Out of curiosity - how much is this box going to cost you all in? MB, cpu, ram, storage, nic, case, power supply?

Keep in mind your building a router/firewall - not a PC to play latest FPS game on ;)

Pretty sure your over what a sg-6100 would cost already, and haven't even priced the ram or case..

JKnott

@jknott

There's one other feature of the Qotom I didn't mention. It has a serial port that can be used as the console. This comes in handy when it's installed in a remote location and you want a dial up backdoor.

Aryeduino

@andyrh Thanks
I was also wondering if the Motherboard Gigabyte B560I AORUS PRO AX can support the PCIe Card with 4 Ports. since I already have the intel card at hand and I am going to buy the Mini-ITX from a different place I must know if there would not be any compatibility issues between the MB and the 4Ports Intel NIC card.

I know that it is an overkill and also I wanted to know if I can use the onboard Wifi cards or not? since this is a new MB and it has the price that includes the two WiFi cards - and since I am building a router - I do not want to spend a lot of money on the build BUT I also want to use the Wifi cards - you said that it is not recommended - can you please explain why?

thanks

johnpoz

@aryeduino said in Building my pfSence Router - Please, Help chose the Hardware for my build - Thank You!:

can you please explain why?

Because freebsd wifi support is pretty much non existent - doesn't even support AC, let alone AX unless maybe there has been a some serious changes in 12.3 or 13 of freebsd?

Might be able to use it as a out of band connection to pfsense for your own use, or maybe as another wan connection in a failover scenario. But as AP for wifi clients - yeah not a good choice at all.

Aryeduino

@johnpoz Thanks
I do understand you mentioned AC and AX - what about N? I need it for the Lab connectivity for starts - can that be a good for N? I need if for Wifi not Wifi6 for now.
Regarding the FreeBSD - it will not be supporting Wifi6 at all? Does pfSence uses ONLY FreeBSD? I would be happy to learn. Thanks

AndyRH

I would say give it a try. If it meets your needs then you are done. If not then you can get a proper AP.

Aryeduino

@andyrh Thanks, good advice
Regarding the compatibility of the Motherboard with the intel 4NIC PCIe Card, would it be OK to get this Motherboard Gigabyte B560I AORUS PRO AX for the card? Thanks

AndyRH

It has a PCIe slot (16x) I do not see a reason it would not work. I have put 1x cards in 16x slots, it is designed to work just fine like that.

JKnott

@aryeduino

Most people would recommend a separate access point for WiFi.

Aryeduino

Thank you @andyrh

Aryeduino

@jknott Thanks
I do have more AP in my house, I just thought to have these two work as my Lab Connectivity of which does not need more then N :) Even if it has AX - i would be happy to have them working as my Lab AP rather then not using them at all - and maybe in the future they will support AX in pf Sence - that would be great.

johnpoz

@aryeduino said in Building my pfSence Router - Please, Help chose the Hardware for my build - Thank You!:

maybe in the future they will support AX in pf Sence - that would be great.

Don't hold your breath ;) heheheh

But sure if what your buying has wifi, and you have use in your "lab" and it works at N.. but I thought there was a thing were only 2.4 ghz? Or really limited support for chipsets and N? I doubt your latest and greatest wifi card had a driver to be honest - but maybe it it works?

Prob good place to read about freebsd wifi support or lack of it would be here

https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi

I wouldn't expect much from freebsd when it comes to wifi, now or even in the future - just not something they have ever really had much interest in.. And unless supported in freebsd, I don't see netgate/pfsense spending cycles on doing their own drivers, etc.

But if your expectations is slow wifi - then yeah you might be ok ;)

If your goal is wifi for your "lab" you would be much better off getting some 20$ wifi router and and just using it as AP for your lab.. I really wouldn't spend any cycles on trying to get wifi working on freebsd to be honest - cuz its just going to suck overall, even compared to some shit wifi router you had that you couldn't bring yourself to throw out ;)

Again - just curious, you don't have to answer but what is this budget at for all in for this box.. It has to be over what 6100 would cost.. Have you even looked at any of the netgate appliances?

stephenw10

An Atheros based 3x3:3 802.11N card is best you will do in current pfSense directly.
It works fine at 5GHz though. Check the Wireless section in the forum for suggestions.

Steve

Tzvia

I didn't see the use case for that machine... maybe I missed it.
I had gone down this road twice, a mini ITX box. No, scratch that, 3 times. The first was real budget, an AMD AM1 setup with the 5350 chip and MSI AM1M board. 300watt PSU (way overkill) 4 port intel server pull NIC from Amazon, 8 gigs ram. old laptop hard drive. Worked fine, but a bit slow saving changes in the GUI- anything actually that wrote to disk because of the disk. An SSD fixed that. Should have stopped there. But I ditched the little AMD that could, for a Kaby Lake I3 and Gigabyte board (H270N WIFI). It was snappier in the GUI but network wise, no difference. Not stopping there, I made that computer into my little kitchen computer as an excuse for a Pentium G 6400/Asrock B460M-ITX. Well, my mother's computer died so I repurposed that Asrock to her new desktop, and made a smart move. I got one of those Qotom-Q555G6, i5 7200, added 8 gigs ram and a 64 gig MSATA. Probably cheaper than what you are thinking about, would work as well, and with the money saved, buy a real WAP like a Ubiquity. In the end, you have a better setup- between the better WIFI and the low power silent mini PC with a very capable i5. They even have an i7 one if you need to service a small office full of people or have symmetrical gigabit that you will be maxing out constantly. So I had fallen down the rabbit hole, managed to recover, and am now in recovery and resisting the urge to waste money. Oh, put that NIC in your gaming rig or server in the home lab. Mine is in a box; I have a better one in my ESXI host... and that is another story...