Dual Intel LAN NUC!
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Actually, I think your choices are perfectly reasonable.
25W isn't bad. Unless electricity is crazy high price where you are, the cost benifit is in your favor.
Plus, older hardware usually works better with pfsense anyway to be honest.
Seems to me that usually when I pay premium for "bleeding edge" I'm usually just paying for bugs.
I think my old athlon is burning 45w….
I'm really really happy with my q1900dc-itx. Its working quite well on linux but I think on pfsense it would be a different story probably.
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Gone a bit off topic here but anyway…
The real reason I'm running such hardware is for fun. My inner geek just loves to make some piece of hardware do something it was never intended to do. :)
Yes 25W is good but not great. Looks pretty bad compared to the Alix at ~5W. The cost of electricity is getting ever higher but right now the sums don't always add up. I would want to get pay back on new hardware within, say, 3 years. Seems reasonable? I could have swapped out my old box a long time ago but would it have been worth it. I'm saving ~17W, those are pretty rough figures though I'll have to actually measure the Wh over a week. That's ~150kWh a year. At 12.82p/kWh that's ~£20 a year. So actually over 3 years that would have paid off the cost of that box from Ebay. ::)Steve
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I'm same as you.
The only reason I built that q1900dc-itx computer is because Its remote from me and my sons are super lazy about cleaning fans in cases, psu, cpu etc. I also like that it will run directly off the DC of my solar without firing up the inverter. Very efficient.
I had an old athlon there but they let it die of dust and heat. )-:
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(24 * 365 * 25)/1000 * .1282 = 28.07580
(24 * 365 * 5)/1000 * .1282 = 5.615160
The low-end C2K SoCs are 6W TDP, 10W system.
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When I next upgrade it's not going to be driven purely by economics. It would take many years to pay off even the most frugal system. There are many other reasons I might do it though, the total and VPN throughput of that firebox is nothing special. With any luck I might need more than that soon enough.
I also like that it will run directly off the DC of my solar without firing up the inverter. Very efficient.
Nice. Care to detail your system? Are you running purely from panels and batteries or you have chargers, regulators etc?
Steve
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It has 2 100 AMP-hour deep cycle batteries with very low internal resistance. Low loss on charging.
300 Watts of mono-crystal solar cell.Uses a morningstar PWM charge controller.
The computer runs straight DC off the batteries.
The batteries stay at full charge. In the event of a power outage a Xantrex Prowatt Sw2000 with a quick switching relay acts as ups. It switches power fast.
The system is very old by now. I built it long ago. Even the inverter is old and thats the newest part. I originally used a modified sine wave inverter.
That never failed but a real sinewave inverter is better for inductive loads. It just keeps going.
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The batteries stay at full charge.
So you don't run the machine after dark?
I'm just considering what size batteries and panel I might need for a 25W continuous load and how long the payback might be on such a system. The biggest problem with solar here in the UK, even in the south, is that variation between summer and winter in Wh per day is huge.Steve
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In hawaii I was able to run all my lights in my small apartment and only used a 100W panel.
Less light in Maryland, so I use 3.
You can size your battery, charger, inverter etc based stricly on the intended load.
You can estimate solar panel need to be around 200w to keep the battery charged.
You can add another panel if its not charging well.
Its hard to estimate your available sunlight not being there. Not knowing your available orientation to the sun. Average shading. ETC.
Knowing what you know about seasonal solar variation there, build and test it in the dead of winter. Around Dec 21st – Winter Solstice
Yes - The computer runs 24/7. It barely bothers the batteries. They recharge to full shortly after the sun is up. Its drawing maybe 13w.
I think solar is a great way to power low watt items like modem, router, switch etc. If sized properly, its far more reliable than grid power.
Pretty much guaranteed to never surge or spike or brown out if its all DC directly its especially reliable.
So thats Maryland.
Where I am now, in Manila, there is 4x as much solar radiation and electricity is 2.5x higher than USA prices.
This is what we call a "no brainer". I will build something here big enough to power the house completely.
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Links to hardware?
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Nice. :)
I do like to see a wide input voltage, mostly because I have loads of laptop power supplies and I'm a cheapskate. Also though with the cost of electricity rising ever higher I'm more seriously considering a small scale solar installation. I realise that's incredibly niche and it's also somewhat just moving the power electronics to different place in the system. I'm sure Phil would be pleased. ;)Steve
Yes, Phil is pleased and happy that this niche is becoming more popular. My bigger offices would do well with 4-port devices so we can have 2 WAN/ISP connections and have 2 LAN (e.g. office LAN and guest WiFi system) without also having to add a VLAN switch. But want 12V DC and low-power to run from solar as much as possible.The links from gonzopancho look promising. It will be interesting to know what power the production boards use at or close to idle (which is most of the time) and when doing some real work, and also if they officially can take wide-range DC input (e.g. 10/11-15/16VDC) to connect directly to batteries that are being charged and discharged during day and night.
Outside of Kathmandu we have to beg to get a 2Mbps link, so bandwidth/throughput/processing power is not our problem any time soon! -
The q1900dc-itx is a nice computer. I run it as the main linux machine for the house supporting samba shares, printer sharing, and as the media (Movies, music, pandora, hulu, netflix) machine that is hooked up to a large TV. It simultaneously runs windows inside a VM to support a legacy printer/scanner. It accepts voltage from 9v - 19v DC with a common barrel plug. I don't think phil.davis would want to use it as his router, but I assume he also needs real computers? Its super low power and no fans to fail. Mine runs super cool. Around 27c for the mobo and 38 for the CPU.
As far as the computer, http://www.jetwaycomputer.com/JBC311U93.html
I like it OK. Good enough for pfsense. I like the HDMI ports because I prefer full installs with regular monitors and keyboards, mouse, etc.
Abit pricey for my uses and not as fast as my current board but power use is lower so if you are on a power budget, might be nice. -
Abit pricey for my uses and not as fast as my current board but power use is lower so if you are on a power budget, might be nice.
Yes, more expensive, no AES-NI, and higher power than other solutions.
But pfSense runs on it, so you can do what you like!
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Howdy All:
I was eyeballing an older Intel NUC –DCCP847DYE--Rather cheap at $150
Only one LAN but it has 2 mini-pci-e. One full and one half sized slot.
I want to build a nice low power pfSense MIFI and with 2 slots this will work.Half sized -Atheros/Full SierraQ: Any other NUC's offer 2 mini PCIe slots in any form??
I see the DC3217IYE as well but both are last generation QS77 and that one is more.
Thanks Frank -
Similar to _Rogue I was also looking for a pfsense wlan router with <10W, small and enough power to OpenVPN >50 Mbit (and in an ideal case 100MBit for the upcoming VDSL2 line) and ended up with the noted Jetway HBJC311U93W-2930-B and just replaced the internal half-sized intel wlan with an atheros version. And while rather early, the device seems to do the job.
Regarding power usage: with pfsense 2.1.5, Kingston 60GB SSD, 4GB ram, network, HDMI and a Logitech K400 keyboard connected the jetways power usage is 8.5W when idle - wich is much lower than I expected with HDMI on.
The other cheaper available solution I considered was the Mitac E220 based on the J1900 and dual lan (but no Intel NICs).
Otherwise I agree with gonzopancho, if you have the time to wait, I guess there will be plenty of nice hardware coming up next year with AES-NI support to allow very fast VPNs in small devices with <10W. But isn't there always a better solution next year? And the HBJC311U93W-2930-B will still be usefull for other jobs (media player, …) once replaced.
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8.5W is impressive. How are you measuring it? Do you have powerd enabled? Does it recognise such a relatively new cpu?
Steve
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So what did you choose for Atheros radio. I have a bunch and finally found a good half card.
Dell Alienware AR5BHB112.
Only Atheros 450M half card i could find.
I bought the DC3217IYE to build a mifi hotspot. -
I like that the Jetway uses wide range of input voltages. From 9V-24V. To me that is very versatile. I am guessing the intel NUC is 19V only?~??
I will fire up adjustable power supply and test when it arrives. I am really hoping it works at 12V as i would like to incorporate a PicoUPS into my MIFI so i can carry it from the car to an outlet with a battery pack I want to build it with 12V-12AH SLA batteries and an plastic enclosure..I'm thinking lunchbox design with battery on bottom and the computer on hinged lid with a handle outside.. -
The 8.5W with pfsense 2.1.5 on the jetway HBJC311U93W-2930-B were without any additional power optimzations done. Just the default pfsense settings. I only did setup the LAN ports. But considering the old pfsense version and nor could I find any other data available online, I tried other systems incl. pfSense 2.2 (amd64-20141108-0611).
Now let's summarize the idle power findings:
pfsense 2.1.5 no tweakings: 8.5W pfsense 2.2 no tweakings: 10.0W pfsense 2.2 PowerD enabled: 9.7W ipfire 2.15 no tweakings: 8.8W ipfire 2.15 (powertop savings): 7.3WAll tests were made with HDMI on and usb keyboard connected. Default A01 BIOS settings.
Without HDMI/usb devices connected the above values are only further reduced by 0.2-0.3W.I am new to FreeBSD (do have Linux experience), but I really wonder what those high pfsense 2.2 values are causing. The CPU is rather idle and thus there is no process causing this. Any help/recommendation would be great as good non-obsolete info on powerd on FreeBSD seems hard to find. On Linux enabling the powersaving of usb/PCI/sata/audio as recommded by powertop reduced the consumption by 1.5W and with pfsense 2.2 there needs to be done more to become competitive.
stephenw10: power measurements were made with a small old power meter EKM 265 from ELV. The low power measurements in the past were pretty
compareble to figures published based on a professoinal LMG 95 device from ZES. So they are unlikely completly off ;-) I also did some measurents using a Fritz!Dect 200 wich provides 0.15W higher values on the jetway and allows displaying the power usage over time.Phishfry: I bought a noname Atheros 9280 card. I avoided the newer cards for now, as I allready would be lucky to get this one working reliable. I had my share of driver problems with atheros in the past on dd-wrt and OpenWRT devices. Never worked 100% reliable.
And at last some openssl benchmarks results. During those tests the power usage increased by 2-3 watt. Sorry I had no tools for a quick max test. But based the Intel NUC measurements published, I guess with CPU and GPU maxed out you can get 16-17W - very unlikely values in routing practice wich should stay <10W if pfSense 2.2 power usage is optimized.
pfsense 2.2: OpenSSL 1.0.1i-freebsd 6 Aug 2014 built on: date not available options:bn(64,64) rc4(16x,int) des(idx,cisc,16,int) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(idx) compiler: cc The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes md5 14908.20k 58849.61k 155058.26k 265082.06k 334230.87k sha1 17859.42k 55769.09k 126660.18k 186410.67k 216241.49k des cbc 36870.12k 39487.79k 40424.19k 40656.21k 40716.97k des ede3 14402.27k 14809.69k 14941.95k 14975.32k 14944.25k aes-128 cbc 37023.75k 41897.60k 43502.68k 109868.71k 111091.71k aes-192 cbc 31610.94k 34957.65k 36090.50k 93038.25k 93937.66k aes-256 cbc 27236.69k 29907.31k 30949.97k 80860.47k 81214.77k sha256 15787.31k 35099.65k 59627.26k 72193.37k 76961.11k sha512 12212.90k 48712.92k 75503.70k 105785.00k 120015.53k sign verify sign/s verify/s rsa 2048 bits 0.005758s 0.000221s 173.7 4533.4 sign verify sign/s verify/s dsa 2048 bits 0.001743s 0.002090s 573.6 478.4ipfire 2.15: OpenSSL 1.0.1j 15 Oct 2014 built on: Thu Oct 16 11:14:49 GMT 2014 options:bn(64,32) md2(int) rc4(idx,int) des(ptr,risc1,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(idx) compiler: gcc -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DZLIB_SHARED -DZLIB -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DSSL_FORBID_ENULL -DHAVE_CRYPTODEV -DUSE_CRYPTODEV_DIGEST -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -Wall -O2 -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fPIC -fstack-protector-all --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -march=i586 -mtune=generic -fomit-frame-pointer -DPURIFY The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed. type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes md5 11160.98k 39212.15k 111467.05k 208104.08k 279203.13k sha1 8932.52k 25254.60k 52538.79k 72554.47k 81828.34k des cbc 17631.95k 18286.85k 18464.98k 18526.98k 18565.72k des ede3 6923.09k 7041.20k 7061.36k 7067.37k 7086.37k aes-128 cbc 42861.52k 46583.46k 47833.87k 48221.22k 48377.84k aes-192 cbc 37666.14k 40351.69k 41397.66k 41620.11k 41756.29k aes-256 cbc 33229.59k 35514.66k 36174.95k 36391.55k 36339.38k sha256 8464.54k 20115.75k 36104.36k 45101.31k 48788.85k sha512 2480.39k 9917.46k 14650.50k 20254.65k 22848.81k sign verify sign/s verify/s rsa 2048 bits 0.049082s 0.001477s 20.4 676.9 sign verify sign/s verify/s dsa 2048 bits 0.013782s 0.016444s 72.6 60.8 -
The only good way to measure power draw is with a amp meter… On the cord that plugs into the wall or battery power.
But I'm sure its quite low.
I'd like to have one of the new atom 8 core boards but I'd run alot more than just pfsense on it.
