New PF Sense Build - Need Expert Advice (Thank You)

[soulwise]

Hello!

It has been severral years from my first buid of PF Sense. Abandoned it because of the noise that the old disk drive was making all the time… but that post is not about that.

I am planning to build another quieter, better PF Sense System and for that a good friend gave me the ASRock Q1900TM-ITX board, a passive cooled, laptop power brick powered mITX motherboard.
This motherboard has a Qualcomm Atheros AR8171 gigabit chip that is not supported ( apparently) by the PF Sense.
After a few days of searching i found right here a post from 2014 form a user that managed recompiling the driver back then and posted it to the forum but the link is gone... Can anyone help me with that problem or the PF Sense now supports that onboard gigabit Chip?
Money is tight for this project and i can not change the motherboard.
Apart from that i am planning to use for the build:

• 1 TP-Link TG-3468 gigabit adapter
• 1 Zeppelin 2GB DDR3 1333MHz bulk RAM stick
• 1 Transcend HSD370 Series 32GB SATA-III Half-Slim SSD for the OS and a little bit of caching (maybe??) with squid

The case i already have, it-s an old Antec ISK300-150 from another build. I will not consider getting an HDD for this build, in time it gets too loud and i don't want it to hear the HDD seeking in the middle of the night.
The Internet  link i have is Gigabit and there will be three users on the router, two on wireless ( using an ASUS RT N56U in access point mode ) and one only on cable connection. I also have a FreeNAS Box for storage and access to my files from anywhere. All of these will be connected to the PF Sense system with a TP-Link TL-SG105 Switch i allready have.  Also i am considerind using an 32 GB PNY CF card that i have and a S-ata to CF adapter instead of the SSD, if the combo is going to provide me with a better reliability than the SSD.

Any advices on the hardware ?
What i can do better for maximum performance?
What about that Qualcomm Atheros AR8171 ? It is officially supported ? If No, pretty please point me in the right direction, i am a total noob. :)

Thanks in advance and sorry for my poor english.

[Guest]

This motherboard has a Qualcomm Atheros AR8171 gigabit chip that is not supported ( apparently) by the PF Sense.

This thread can be interesting for you as well I think. LAN Driver, Qualcomm Atheros AR8171

Also i am considerind using an 32 GB PNY CF card that i have and a S-ata to CF adapter instead of the SSD,

Than better the SSD, it is also quite and better or faster then the CFCard, because the Squid does need caching
the data at a place.

Any advices on the hardware ?

You where telling that there is no money for changing something
so you will be only find it out be testing it out.

What i can do better for maximum performance?

Please read under CPU selection

Can anyone help me with that problem or the PF Sense now supports that onboard gigabit Chip?

To come closer

[soulwise]

Thank you!

[soulwise]

@soulwise:

Thank you!

Ok, here i am, The server is built, the driver downloaded but despite my best efforts i can not seem to load the driver for the Onboard interface ( Qualcomm Atheros AR8171).
Please someone can tell me step bay step where to enter and exactly what to do ?

Thank You again.

[soulwise]

Please, no one can help me with a procedure, a few lines of code ?
I just need to install that driver but no one explains stab by step how to do it.

[messerchmidt]

asrock or asus matx (or itx) celeron n3150 board

adding a bit more ram would probably be a good idea. at least 4gb

i would go for the matx board as it has more pcie slots, for the future.

[soulwise]

Thaks for the advice but for the moment i have no choice but to try to use what i have.
I have to wait until fix, someone points me in the right direction, new PFSense distro or i find similar parts (mobo with no fan and DC-In Jack for power). Meanwhile the machine that i was planning to use for the PFSense box was turned into a small PC for browsing the web and i reverted to my old ASUS N56U.