New PF system for home (atom/zacate vs low power sandy bridge)

nonzenze

Any feedback on how this worked for you guys?

jms703

Any feedback on how this worked for you guys?

I built a system with these parts:

Intel G620 CPU (The T version costs more and didn't appear to offer much power savings in benchmarks)
Intel S1200KP Mini-ITX Server board
Corsair 4GB DDR3
120GB 2.5" SATA
Antec ISK300-150

Things I like about this setup:

The system runs at 36 watts when idle.
The OEM CPU fan is quiet.
I have an half-height PCI express slot if I need it.
Dual intel gigabit NICs.
No extra ports on back, just USB, DVI, and network.
Upgradable - Motherboard supports Sandy Bridge CPUs from Pentium G620, i3, i5, i7, and Xeon E3.

Things I don't like about this setup:

The case is bigger than the M350.
The power supply (150w) is more than I needed.
Zip ties are required to get any sort of cable management.

Note: If you get a E3 Xeon chip, make sure you get one that ends in a "5" model number. Those chips have GPU built-in. This motherboard has NO VIDEO chipset onboard, nor does it have any SERIAL PORTS.

stephenw10

You could probably do a lot better than 36W if you used a DC-DC power supply.
The PSU supplied with that case seems pretty awful. See the detailed review, here.
If you look at the table of efficiency vs power you can see a few things. This PSU is, at best, 75% efficient but at the lowest reading <65%. However that 65% reading is still at 66W input, at 36W input it's likely to be down at 50%!

If your system is idling most of the time, it probably is with that fast cpu, you could be wasting half your power consumption.

Just for comparison I replaced the PSU in my Watchguard box with a Chinese DC-DC unit (120W rating) and the consumption dropped from 30W to 22W. However the original PSU in that box was relatively good.

Steve

dreamslacker

The power consumption can be reduced further by enabling EIST in pfSense (FreeBSD in general actually). Does more than what normal P4TCC throttling would do and it's response is much better than with regular throttling of the CPU.

EIST can be enabled by:

Go to System -> Advanced -> Miscellaneous -> Enable PowerD

Go to Diagnostics -> Edit FIle -> Create /boot/loader.conf.local
Insert:

hint.p4tcc.0.disabled=1
hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled=1
est_load="YES"

Reboot for effect.

Metaluna

@jms703:

I built a system with these parts:

Intel G620 CPU (The T version costs more and didn't appear to offer much power savings in benchmarks)
Intel S1200KP Mini-ITX Server board
Corsair 4GB DDR3
120GB 2.5" SATA
Antec ISK300-150

I really like that Intel motherboard, but you mentioned earlier you were running OpenBSD 5.0 on that board right? Has anyone confirmed if this board, especially the NICs, work with pfSense?

jms703

@Metaluna:

you mentioned earlier you were running OpenBSD 5.0 on that board right? Has anyone confirmed if this board, especially the NICs, work with pfSense?

Correct. OpenBSD 5.0 runs well. I don't run FreeBSD/FreeNAS on this box because I am taking advantage of some newer PF features that are not yet in FreeBSD/FreeNAS.

jms703

Just a quick update. The system I built for someone with the G620 is running fine. No regrets.

So I wanted to build a 2nd system for myself at home, but change the processor to a Xeon E3-2130 or higher so that I could run a bunch of VMs on it. When I priced it out, a build-your-own Xeon system with the specs I needed was roughly the same price as a preconfigured HP Proliant ML110 G7 (the one with the E3-1240 CPU) for $720. So I bought the HP. It's small and quiet. I installed Fedora 16 on the box because I wanted to use Linux KVM for virtualization. I passed one of the 82574L NICs directly to the PFSense VM and it works great. Runs at 39-40 watts when idle and VMs running.

(I didn't choose ESXi 5 because it doesn't like the ICH10R controller in the HP. It 'purple-screens'. I tried Xen, but its weird and I'd need to recompile PFSense for driver support. I decided on Linux KVM and I'm not looking back. It's fast. I also really like configuring my VMs from the command line. ESXi, Xen and even RedHat's RHEV (KVM-based commercial product) all require WINDOWS clients to administer.)