OptiPlex 745 4GB RAM Celeron 3.06GHz - work with 75Mbps/15Mbps WAN?
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I am looking at a cheap box that I want to use and am wondering if it would be worth purchasing and putting pfSense on it.
It is an OptiPlex 745 with 4GB of RAM and a Celeron 3.06GHz CPU.
The onboard Ethernet is 10/100/1000 and I would buy a PCI card with the same 1 Gigabit capability.
I already looked up the Ethernet card on here and someone had it working perfectly as LAN.
This box would be my router, right after the Cable modem. I have a 75Mbps down/ 15 Mbps up connection. It would also serve as a firewall, and maybe VPN.
Would this be able to handle 75Mbps download?
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Sure, without any problems. But it would be an overkill… for that bandwidth I'd rather look for an Atom-based system, or even some thin client hardware, which would eat way less power, take less space and look nicer. Look for Igel, Neoware, HP thin clients... they work great with pfSense.
look here: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=45430.0I'm currently testing some HP Compaq t5730 Thin Clients too, they have one gigabit port but they could handle VLANs as "router on a stick" do.
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I didn't really think of thin clients.
I guess I am just thinking ahead, and really wanting to have headroom with power and resources.I host my own datacenter in the basement, so I have ProLiant servers (16GB RAM each) running at all times. The extra 50 Watts isn't that much of a deal. I heard of a larger PC only using 50 Watts at load.
I just want to test pfSense, and remove my router I have now. The router is ISP lent, and it's extremely slow and often reboots.
But, I am keeping in mind that I do not want a fan running in the background which would usually be loud on these desktop PCs.I'll definitely check that out, and feel so much better that someone said my idea might be overkill. Now I am confident that I can handle the bandwidth.