HP T620 Plus + 4port gigabit NIC for $117 OR LESS + shipping. Good for network appliance/pfsense/etc

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BLinux

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Thanks to @nthu9280 for pointing me to the HP T620 Plus as a solution for a small firewall appliance, I went scouring eBay looking for deals and found something I thought I'd share with STHers:

HP T620 Plus Thin Client w/ AMD GX-420CA 4-core 2Ghz, 4GB RAM, and 16GB Flash for $99.99+S&H, but my BO of $80 was accepted for qty=2 (I got a spare), and for me shipping was $18 for 2:

HP t620 Thin Client AMD GX-420CA Quad Core 2.0Ghz 16GB Flash 4GB Ram with AC | eBay

Add to that, a Low profile Intel I340-T4 based 4-port 1Gbps NIC for $16.95:

IBM Intel 94Y5167 Quad Port PCIe Ethernet Server Adapter | eBay

Dang it! Looks like someone bought the last 10 of them. Here's another listing for a broadcom based quad port nic for $16:

IBM 49Y7949 Netxtreme II 1000 quad Port Ethernet PCIe Low Profile Network Card 708702290032 | eBay

In total, I spent $160+$18+34=$212 for 2 units, making each about $106.

GX-420CA passmark score is 2299 w/ 25W TDP
Power Consumption of the unit is estimated about 20W, @nthu9280 tested it at 18W idle, 25W under load.

I haven't received mine yet, so I can't say anything how this is going to really turn out for me. Seems to be a good little box for pfsense/opnsense, but I will be putting Linux on it.

For my own benefit and others, here's the hardware manual:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04046809

Shows 2 internal USB ports, and what looks like a mSATA slot for the 16GB Flash? The SSD is mentioned at the very end.
 
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Patrick

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I wonder what the PCIe card is in the units pictured and if that indeed is in the package. It almost looks like a NIC perhaps?
 

nthu9280

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I wonder what the PCIe card is in the units pictured and if that indeed is in the package. It almost looks like a NIC perhaps?
IIRC, listings from some other seller said it was Allied Telesys Fiber 100 NIC.

i was thinking the audio out jack would be great to hook up a speaker to and customize the system to play sounds whenever it detects a successful exploit over the network.
:) I think built-in speaker is good enough unless you want to add stereo speakers.

YMMV, If the original seller runs out. I got mine from the below seller, I looked up their completed auctions and messaged the seller with $55+ shipping and they accepted. My cost was pretty close to what @BLinux got due to higher shipping. As you can see they only list few auctions at a time.

4tronenterprise | eBay
 

Kernelpanic

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I've been using similar setup for some time, I also used the older HP T610 plus. They run excellent and are adequate for home or small business usage. I have a 4 location site2site vpn setup using openvpn and works perfectly. One thing to keep in mind is the 16GB Flash, in my setup I am using m.2 ssd.
 

nthu9280

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I've been using similar setup for some time, I also used the older HP T610 plus. They run excellent and are adequate for home or small business usage. I have a 4 location site2site vpn setup using openvpn and works perfectly. One thing to keep in mind is the 16GB Flash, in my setup I am using m.2 ssd.
I'm currently using T610 and is more than adequate for my home lab usage. However, the CPU in T610 does not have AES-NI and the price delta is not that significant for T620.
 

BLinux

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I wonder what the PCIe card is in the units pictured and if that indeed is in the package. It almost looks like a NIC perhaps?
To satisfy your curiosity, it is a Allied Telesis AT-2711FX/SC-901 10/100Mbps PCI Express x1 Fiber 100Base-FX. Seems strange to me to have 100Mbps Fiber with a machine of this generation (around early 2014).
 
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Patrick

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To satisfy your curiosity, it is a Allied Telesis AT-2711FX/SC-901 10/100Mbps PCI Express x1 Fiber 100Base-FX. Seems strange to me to have 100Mbps Fiber with a machine of this generation (around early 2014).
I know someone who may have bought one from that auction as well. Mine has not arrived yet though.

I agree. By 2014 I would imagine most places were on copper. Perhaps they are from a call center with huge distances to the data closet?