DaBeach Posted June 28, 2010 Share Posted June 28, 2010 Anyone have any suggestions as to wether I should go ahead and purchase a new Mini ITX MB, Case & Memory or just keep my current ATX 3Ghz 1GB setup for my pfSense firewall? I guess it boils down to power savings. The attraction to the ITX setup is reduced power consumption vs a regular PC as above however, I am not sure what the power difference between the two would be and if it would be worth the additional cost. Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted June 28, 2010 Share Posted June 28, 2010 3GHz what? You need to list precise specs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted June 28, 2010 Share Posted June 28, 2010 @DaBeach, could you post all of your system specs in here? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaBeach Posted June 29, 2010 Author Share Posted June 29, 2010 (edited) My bang around box is an HP M470N Media Center Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz Hyper-Threading ASUS P4SD-LA with Intel 848P chipset. 1Gb PC3200 or better dual-inline. On-board RealTek 8101L 10/100 Ethernet On-the-motherboard 5.1 soundHarman Kardon 2.1 speakers Serial (1294) portTwo PS/2 ports (one keyboard, and one mouse)EPP/ECP Parallel portSix USB 2.0/1.1 ports (two in front and four in back)Two FireWire (1394) ports (one in front and one in back)RJ45 network interface portRJ11 connector (on the modem) Three PCI slots (two in use, one open)One AGP slot (in use)Two serial ATA connectors 200 watt (max) or greater power supply for ATX style motherboards After testing today it pulls: 125w on boot and 87 when settled and after calculation should cost .25 a day to operate. I will have to look into the ITX boards to see what they draw and would hope it was half or less power usage. I also tested one of my netbooks which I beleive operated on an Intel Atom and it pulls 30w with a cost of .21 a day so assuming the Mini ITX is very close it seems the additional cost per day would be .04 cents. That does not seem to be worth the additional expense of a new ITX setup. Would take 14 years to payback. Edited June 29, 2010 by DaBeach Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted June 29, 2010 Share Posted June 29, 2010 True. But a new atom system would take up less space, run cooler and be more powerful. Its your call really, I'd happily ditch that system for something smaller myself (the ALIX system I keep mentioning draws around 4W) but your right in thinking Al Gore won't be banging on your door with an award if you do choose to upgrade. And there is also the WAF scale to consider ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaBeach Posted June 29, 2010 Author Share Posted June 29, 2010 (edited) True. But a new atom system would take up less space, run cooler and be more powerful. Its your call really, I'd happily ditch that system for something smaller myself (the ALIX system I keep mentioning draws around 4W) but your right in thinking Al Gore won't be banging on your door with an award if you do choose to upgrade. And there is also the WAF scale to consider ;) Well like Al I drive a suburban with no passengers most of the time and my other car is a full size hog as well. I am happy to not only use my carbon credits but to use the credits of others without asking! The space issue was the first reason I was attracted to the ITX setup and the temperature of the system as well as excess heat is only wasted energy anyways. When you say that the atom system would be more powerful what exactly do you mean and how? As far as the ALIX board, I really like the idea and most likely will pick one up to test as I am sure this will be a great component for a project yet to be defined. With the ALIX board I was concerned about the 500Mhz as I read that the pfSense with Snort may require more cpu power based on the amount of filters/rules applied. Now while I am new to Snort and am currently testing only one filter I am not sure if I will want more later. And while I think of it the ALIX may have a role in my surveillance system in the future I will have to think about this. As an aside I also power tested my Netgear FVS338 and discovered that the operational costs were about .21 daily which surprised me as I expected it be lower. So again the .04 a day difference between it and the current setup is minimal. Edited June 29, 2010 by DaBeach Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted June 29, 2010 Share Posted June 29, 2010 PFsense + Snort on a ALIX? That I couldn't answer, you would be best off asking about this on the PFsense forums. Mine just does routing and firewall. As for the performance of a 330 vs a P4, the Atom will be faster, use less power and most importantly, take up a fraction of the space. My Jetway Atom 330 system takes up about half the space of a shoebox for instance. It comes down to what your doing with it, if your running lots of little tasks at the same time, Atom 330, if you running 1 task which needs lots of CPU, stick with the P4. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaBeach Posted June 29, 2010 Author Share Posted June 29, 2010 Well I flubbed my power usage calculations. ASUS Netbook 8W $0.0027 a day Current P4 3Ghz Router Setup 86.33W $0.31 a day So if the Mini ITX was similar in power as to the netbook (minus the LCD) it would take 2 years to recover the cost of the new Mini ITX setup @ around $200.00. As per the ALIX @ 4W I would assume would be half the cost of the netbook to run so approx $0.0135 a day. I think in the future I will buy the ITX and ALIX boards and test how they work with my pfSense router setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.