Challenge: A SFF 6x GbE port machine for a firewall costing under US$300.

[sparkyson]

I know. I was hoping of resurrecting the thread.
I was very informative, but the information is a little outdated. I am interested in building a router for my gigabit PPPOE connection and I'm looking for a low power, high performance board that can sustain such throughput. I also have a second ISP, so load balancing would be great.

 

[Patrick]

Would certainly cost more than $300 but in the near future the quad core C2550 based boards will be out lowering cost slightly. Add to that platform a dual, quad or six port NIC and you can easily get 6+ ports.

 

[RimBlock]

I know. I was hoping of resurrecting the thread.
I was very informative, but the information is a little outdated. I am interested in building a router for my gigabit PPPOE connection and I'm looking for a low power, high performance board that can sustain such throughput. I also have a second ISP, so load balancing would be great.

Just doing a quick trawl on ebay brought up;
G620: $60 (Sandy Bridge CPU - see below).
Intel S1200KP: $140 (needs a Sandy bridge CPU to update BIOS if you want to run an Ivy bridge cpu on it).
2GB DDR3 ECC ram: $20
Intel Quad port VT PCIe nic: $68

That comes to US$288 without the case & psu. You may also need a PCIe riser if you choose a small case.

The advantage of the S1200KP Intel motherboard is that it supports ECC ram and comes with dual Intel nics.

The caveat with this build and the challange rules is that the S1200KP is sold by one company at this price, so it is not the standard price and the quad port VT nic is also a great price as these are usually around the $100 mark.

RB

 

[sparkyson]

Looks great, thanks. I'm already starting to gather the components