ASRock Q1900M with Startech ST1000SPEXD3 Dual Port Gigabit PCIe

[wq6n]

Just a note for those who are looking for a low cost embedded PCIe firewall/IPS solution. So far I have excellent results with this suite. The StarTech PCIe dual port Gig ethernet adapter is the same manufacturer as the on-board port. Built the amd 64bit image with pfsense v2.2.1, pfblockerNG, Snort and a few more filters. Decided on the older Q1900M vice the Q2900M board and it seems a good choice so far.

System is smooth and cool (Temp 80F).

Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU J1900 @ 1.99GHz
Current: 1992 MHz, Max: 1993 MHz
4 CPUs: 1 package(s) x 4 core(s)
Memory usage - 3% of 7859 MB

Migrated the system from an embedded Intel D525 Atom 16bit 4gb RAM.

[tirsojrp]

:o

Thanks, but no.

The same manufacturer is Realtek and for the list price of that Startech card you can easily get an Intel Quad Gigabit card.

[Guest]

Based on this CPU but pre assembled and ready to go.
Only for the records.

Option 1 with 4 Intel GB LAN Ports
Option 2 with 5 Intel GB LAN Ports
Option 3 with 5 Intel GB LAN Ports & 32 GB mSATA & pre installed pfSense

[errorz]

I think the intent was going with a cheaper setup.  I ended up using the same setup w/ a dual intel card.

Only Problem is the pcie is x1 and not x2 (aka shorter) which I mistakenly missed that dual intel cards are pcie x2.

So I got hasty and ended up trimming the end of the pcie socket to allow the intel card in (albeit with 1cm hanging out the end) and it works find. I knew you could run longer cards ( x2,x4,x16 etc) in shorter slots… at the loss of the additional bandwidth.

Given that a x1 bandwidth is 250MBytes/sec, I haven't ran into any problems (then again I question if the q1900 would limit it with higher bandwidth).

Other nice thing is you have the original realtek Ethernet as well if needed.

Turned out to be a good experiment, ended up getting the board for $66 w/ rebate and $20 for the intel card used.