Low power socket 1366's - any suggestions?

[zogthegreat]

Hi everyone!

So, I'm planning a pfSense firewall that will be built on a SuperMicro X8DTT-F motherboard, because the boards are really cheap! Since this will only be acting as a home firewall, a chips like a Xeon E5645 would be a bit of an overkill. Also, this board will be running 24/7, so something low powered would be preferable. I've been perusing cpu-world.com and the lowest powered chip that I can find for this board is a Xeon L5618 @ 40w. Not bad, but I would prefer something in the 15w - 30w range. I would like to use something like an Atom chip that supports AES, however, they are priced out of my range.

Does anyone know if the is a lower power socket 1366 CPU?

Thanks!

zog

 

[vanfawx]

Unfortunately an X58 based board will not fit the bill for "low power". Westmere is old and not really tuned for low power.

You're probably better off using something like https://www.amazon.ca/ASRock-J4105-ITX-2-5GHz-Mini-ITX-Motherboard/dp/B079GHRQD9 which will be a 10W SoC quad core. Also includes AES-NI offload.

 

[BlueFox]

The X58 chipset itself has a ~25W TDP. It wasn't designed to be lower power and is a 12 year old platform now.

 

[Deslok]

The L5630 and L5645 are 4 and 6 core chips for that platform with 40w and 60w tdp's respectively, however as others have noted the platform as a whole is not known for low power and you'd be better suited with something atom if you're aiming that low. You can pick up a recent apollo lake system (J4205) on ebay easily enough
Desktop Lenovo ideacentre 310S-08iAP Pentium J4205 1.5GHz 4GB 500GB DVDRW Win10 | eBay

 

[Markess]

So, I'm planning a pfSense firewall that will be built on a SuperMicro X8DTT-F motherboard, because the boards are really cheap!

Going for a used system like @Deslok mentions above, and adding a network card, is probably a cheaper alternative in the long run. These newer used systems cost more up front than an X8DTT-F, but you also get RAM and an enclosure. Plus, if you consider how much savings you'll have with 30W, 50W, or even 70W less consumption an hour, those newer systems will pay for themselves pretty quickly.

If you really want to go older though, as a project or if you want an ECC capable system at a super low cost, maybe consider a Supermicro LGA 1156 board instead? They are of a similar generation to the LGA 1366 boards, but their Intel 3400 chipsets draw less power than the X8DTT-F's 5500 series, and there are 30W CPU options (Xeon L3403 and L3406), that will still use the much cheaper RDIMMs.

Not sure where you are, but in the US Supermicro X8SIE or X8SIL are around $20 to $30. Plus these boards are a standard form factor. With the X8DTT-F, you'd need to do some fabrication to fit them in anything but the twin sled they were designed for.