I want to replace my consumer-grade router with a proper Pfsense one. On hand I have a spare i5-4690k with a spare MB and RAM.
So I was thinking about just buying a rackmount case that comes with a PSU and fans, slap in my spare hardware, grab a LGA 1150 1U or 2U heatsink and a network card. However, I'm not too certain what chassis, etc. to grab and what ones are actually reasonable quality.
Also looking online it seems like a lot of the cases are already over $100 easy, and start entering the territory of where I could buy an old server instead of piecing something together and save my hardware for something else that might use it's power more.
I'd like to get some opinions on these ideas, which is more practical and price-efficient. I'm also willing to go with a pre-built or something more tailored to Pfsense but most I've seen are rather expensive compared to the ebay options.
I'm mostly planning on this being a homelab scenario. Mostly just the basic border between WAN and LAN. I don't have any real plans for making the box do a bunch of extra stuff on the side, I might mess around with some of the extra features but I don't need to setup a VPN that can do 1G both ways or anything intensive like that.
So I was thinking about just buying a rackmount case that comes with a PSU and fans, slap in my spare hardware, grab a LGA 1150 1U or 2U heatsink and a network card. However, I'm not too certain what chassis, etc. to grab and what ones are actually reasonable quality.
Also looking online it seems like a lot of the cases are already over $100 easy, and start entering the territory of where I could buy an old server instead of piecing something together and save my hardware for something else that might use it's power more.
I'd like to get some opinions on these ideas, which is more practical and price-efficient. I'm also willing to go with a pre-built or something more tailored to Pfsense but most I've seen are rather expensive compared to the ebay options.
I'm mostly planning on this being a homelab scenario. Mostly just the basic border between WAN and LAN. I don't have any real plans for making the box do a bunch of extra stuff on the side, I might mess around with some of the extra features but I don't need to setup a VPN that can do 1G both ways or anything intensive like that.