Silent J1900 PFSense box eBay (4x cores and 4x intel ethernet)

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PnoT

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Mar 1, 2015
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I found some insightful info about the AMD board and people using it for pfSense.

ECS KBN-I/2100 AMD APU E1-2100 ITX board

The very last post in that thread concerns me about the CPU usage ~80% on a slow internet connection. I'm thinking something is wrong with his setup as a user previously posted about using openVPN and ti working great. I guess we'll soon find out!

I found this gem of a review on Newegg and it made me laugh for 10 mins

run run run from this Piece of junk. Absolutely the worst purchase I have ever made on newegg.
Stuck with this piece of junk that is soon to fill a spot at the local landfill.
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Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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I just my Newegg.com purchase history. Indeed , I bought 5 ECS board.
I could only find 3, two other boards are hiding from me.

I built a Ubuntu auto-deployment cluster similar to openstack.
It worked really well + low power.

Later, I move the Ubuntu cluster to run inside of a physical vSphere host.
By running virtually, I won't need ipmit to power on and off.

I run my music Albumplayer with one of the ECS board, no fcpu an, pico-psu + SSD, it is complete silent.
 
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AlphaG

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What do you guys recommend for a 1U rack mount case for miniITX? I guess the SM cases are geared more towards their mainboards, with proprietary front panel connectors and such...
 
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Evan

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Jan 6, 2016
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ullbeking said:
Which SM boards are you referring to?
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Sorry just saw this, I was kind of wrong, the SM retail boards don't have it except the older ones like J1900.
Of Conde the Atom c2000/c3000 all have IPMI
 
wiretap

wiretap

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Jul 14, 2015
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AlphaG said:
What do you guys recommend for a 1U rack mount case for miniITX? I guess the SM cases are geared more towards their mainboards, with proprietary front panel connectors and such...
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There are so many options, it really all depends on your needs.
- Slim ITX or regular Mini-ITX?
- Riser board with PCI slot needed?
- Front mounted I/O or rear mounted I/O?
- Hot swap bays needed for cache drives?
- Silent/passive cooled, quiet air cooled, jet engine loud high performance cooling?
- Depth needed -- short depth, half depth, full depth, somewhere in between?
- Power supply size needed?
- Aluminum or steel construction?
- Rails needed?
- Other I/O needed? USB, CD/DVD, Serial, Console RJ45, etc.
- LCD indicator screen needed?
-...etc
 
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T_Minus

T_Minus

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Rocking a J1900 myself now, but have a C2000 based here to replace it for the NI support... def. over kill for my performance but for the $ it's realy hard to beat them, especially with the tiny 4x hot-swap chassis with 2x internal SSD.
 
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PnoT

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Mar 1, 2015
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I have the ECS KBN-I/ 2100 E1-2100 motherboard thanks to Marsh and was hoping to get a rack mount case with:

1. rails
2. psu included
3. rear I/O
4. 1 PCI slot

I've never bought a mini-ITX and as you've mentioned there are a ton of options. I like the SM 1U cases and was hoping to get something similar but wading through the choices can be daunting. This S4 looks amazing but at $194 that's steep. S4 Mini Chassis - SEPTEMBER PREORDER

The mini.box stuff looks ok but is missing a few of my requirements.

Can you recommend something on the criteria above?
 
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AlphaG

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Jun 8, 2017
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wiretap said:
There are so many options, it really all depends on your needs.
- Slim ITX or regular Mini-ITX?
- Riser board with PCI slot needed?
- Front mounted I/O or rear mounted I/O?
- Hot swap bays needed for cache drives?
- Silent/passive cooled, quiet air cooled, jet engine loud high performance cooling?
- Depth needed -- short depth, half depth, full depth, somewhere in between?
- Power supply size needed?
- Aluminum or steel construction?
- Rails needed?
- Other I/O needed? USB, CD/DVD, Serial, Console RJ45, etc.
- LCD indicator screen needed?
-...etc
Click to expand...
Wow, thanks for the detailed reply! I’m mainly interested in a decent rack mount 1U pfsense solution that will not break the bank. If starting with something like the ECS board listed above, is there something <$100 with PS that would work with a standard mini ITX motherboard and have a riser for a quad gigabit Ethernet adapter? For me, I don’t think the other factors are too much of a concern.
 
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nthu9280

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Feb 3, 2016
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@AlphaG
This may fit your requirements. Based on the pics, looks like it already has dual + quad NIC which you need to verify with the seller. Since this is a complete system, It may already have the riser.
Supermicro Super 5015M-T (SYS5015MT) Server 672042010080 | eBay

or if you just looking for chassis
Supermicro 1U server E1200 Dual Core 1.60 GHz 512MB DDR2 chassis | eBay

Otherwise look for supermicro 512 for rear facing IO or 505 series for front facing IO.

I didn't like the noise factor so I decided to go with a HP T610 Plus thin client which servers my purpose and can push ~300 mbps openssl with < 29W but they are not rack mountable unless you have a shelf

shameless plug :)
I have some spare 512 chassis (bought to save on shipping) that I've not gotten around taking pix & listing yet in my FS thread.
 
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ullbeking

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mjturner said:
I'm not the OP, but I'm not sure if SuperMicro does have a J1900-baed board with IPMI. My X10SBA certainly doesn't have it (does have console redirect over serial though).
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FYI, SM now has the X11SBA-LN4F, based on a Pentium N3700, and it has IPMI. So far this is the strongest contender for the box I want to use as my Internet-facing firewall.
 
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ullbeking

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0x00 said:
The brand new A2SDi-4C-HLN4F at ~$275 looks even better.
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Oh yeah, I've been posting about these new C3000 boards all over the place. Indeed they look amazing, and I am already thinking about getting one for experimental use in a virt server or NAS role.

Personally, I think the Gigabyte MA10-ST0 looks great too, and I'm looking forward to seeing an in-depth technical comparison between the two. It also has 32 MB onboard eMMC so you can install your OS onto it without using up a SATA port or worrying about a USB stick or USBDOM, etc. It also comes with a stock fan.

The 16-core SM board relies on a passive CPU cooler and chassis airflow, and apparently one needs an SM chassis for optimal results. Otherwise you can strap an extra fan onto the heatsink which seems a bit, um, well... I don't think you shouldn't have to do such things to an expensive enterprise board out of the box just to stop it from overheating.

I'm undecided as to which one to get, and waiting for field reports after they hit the shelves to see how they really perform. I have a feeling the Gigabyte might have the edge already for me.

P.S. After SM's C3000 boards are released I expect the price of their C2000 series to drop dramatically. I hope to pick up a C2758 then, if I can get one cheap on the second-hand market and if I can be confident that it doesn't have that notorious bug (the one that everybody know about by now). To be fair, the X10SBA had a serious problem too, caused, IIRC, by a cheap PCIe switch on the quad NIC (this was fixed in recent revisions).

P.P.S. Check out https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...gigabyte-ma10-st0-intel-atom-c3958-soc.16460/ and Supermicro A2SDi (Atom C3000) NAS and virtualization server
 
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Evan

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cesmith9999 said:
https://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-Fir...?ie=UTF8&qid=1505174658&sr=8-4&keywords=3865U

6 ports and Supports AES-NI


Chris
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Looked great till you realise the crappy ethernet included, ok it works but the 82583v vs say the i350 is chalk and cheese, well the i350 is expensive so even i210,i211,i219 would be ok and much much more power efficient.
The network ports probably consume as much power as the entire rest of the machine.

So so close to being a really great system.
 
T_Minus

T_Minus

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Really would like to find A2SDi-4C-HLN4F in stock, want to play around with one :) for a basic home storage, and security mgt seems like nice low power solution for 8x drives w/out more power :)
 
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