Recommendations - Pfsense Mini Itx Mb's

[DaBeach]

Anyone have any recommendations on which Mini ITX MB & CPU to choose for a pfSense router install?

What would you buy and why?

[Infiltrator]

Sorry I think you are probably getting sick of me by now. But going back to your question, ASUS P5G41T-M-LX Motherboard would be a decent board to have on your set up. It comes with its own graphics card, so you don't have to buy or install one.

It already comes with an onboard nic card, as well as with two PCI and One PCI express slot that can be used for installing a wireless or wired card.

It support up to x8 gigs of ram, which is plenty for the kind of system you are building. And above of all, it does not cost very much.

IT also comes with x4 sata ports, which you could use to install more HDDs and turn it into a Firewall/NAS device.

For the CPU side of it, it only supports 775 socket.

Edited June 27, 2010 by Infiltrator

[DaBeach]

Sorry I think you are probably getting sick of me by now. But going back to your question, ASUS P5G41T-M-LX Motherboard would be a decent board to have on your set up. It comes with its own graphics card, so you don't have to buy or install one.

It already comes with an onboard nic card, as well as with two PCI and One PCI express slot that can be used for installing a wireless or wired card.

It support up to x8 gigs of ram, which is plenty for the kind of system you are building. And above of all, it does not cost very much.

IT also comes with x4 sata ports, which you could use to install more HDDs and turn it into a Firewall/NAS device.

For the CPU side of it, it only supports 775 socket.

Hmm. Since this board is a Micro ATX, I guess I would stick with the unit I have (the 3ghz). I considered keeping the spare system as a router but did very much like the idea of the smaller form factor that Darren is building.

Now you mentioned installing additional HDD's to use the system as a firewall and a NAS device. How would this be done as would it not require 2 OS's? Fill me in on this one. As one of the reasons I liked the Micro ITX unit was because I could stack them or perhaps put them in cases and use the additional units for media or storage.

[VaKo]

http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d3.htm

Runs PFsense from a CF card, but also has a 44 pin IDE header if you want to attach a DOM or laptop HDD. About the size of one of those old fashioned double CD cases.

If you want to go bigger, I would recommend something like a Jetway JNC92-330-LF with the optional 3 port gigabit ethernet addon module, or the Jetway J7F4 with dual gigabit.

For a home network, a core2 based router with 8GB of RAM is just a massive amount of overkill, and wasted power consumption (1GB would be more than enough). You don't really want to put wireless directly on the PFsense box itself either. Plus for a router, it needs to rate higher on the WAF scale than a server would.

[Charles]

That's a nice board. No video out, but you can probably install pfSense on the CF and configure it on a different machine, then put it in that board.

[DaBeach]

http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d3.htm

Runs PFsense from a CF card, but also has a 44 pin IDE header if you want to attach a DOM or laptop HDD. About the size of one of those old fashioned double CD cases.

If you want to go bigger, I would recommend something like a Jetway JNC92-330-LF with the optional 3 port gigabit ethernet addon module, or the Jetway J7F4 with dual gigabit.

For a home network, a core2 based router with 8GB of RAM is just a massive amount of overkill, and wasted power consumption (1GB would be more than enough). You don't really want to put wireless directly on the PFsense box itself either. Plus for a router, it needs to rate higher on the WAF scale than a server would.

Wow! And I thought the Mini IXT was small!

[VaKo]

That's a nice board. No video out, but you can probably install pfSense on the CF and configure it on a different machine, then put it in that board.

No need. You install the embedded version by imaging PFsense to a CF card, then configuring it via a null modem cable. For the interface PFsense has, null modem is perfectly fine.

[Charles]

That's great. Very cool.

[Infiltrator]

Now you mentioned installing additional HDD's to use the system as a firewall and a NAS device. How would this be done as would it not require 2 OS's? Fill me in on this one. As one of the reasons I liked the Micro ITX unit was because I could stack them or perhaps put them in cases and use the additional units for media or storage.

Hi DaBeach,

I have some interesting info for you to read, its about the additional hard drives I mentioned on my previous post.

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?PHPSESS...pic,5111.0.html

Edited June 27, 2010 by Infiltrator

[VaKo]

Yes, the unsupported FreeNAS addon for PFsense 2.0 which is due, and I quote, "sometime this year". If you want a NAS, build one around a Atom board, this one is worth looking at, as it has 4 SATA on-board. Or the Point of View MB-D510-MATX board with a PCIe x16 slot which would allow you to install additional SATA expansion cards. Also the Asus Hummingbird board looks very interesting as it has 4 SATA ports and IPMI features, which for a tiny NAS would be bloody useful.

And still, 8GB of RAM is overkill for a NAS, my primary PC has 8GB of RAM and unless I'm running RAM heavy apps it idles with around 1.4GB of usage under Windows 7. FreeNAS et al will use far, far less.