OPNSense Hardware - best option in 2020?

[Mariusz]

I run an R210ii, it's running Windows Server 2019 and I have pfSense in a VM along with Unifi Video and Home Assistant on their own VM's. I keep that machine as my priority machine so that almost never gets touched.

If you don't want rackmount hardware then an old SFF Dell/HP system will be ideal. Low power, quiet, small, upgradeable and you can easily slot in a quad port NIC should you want to.

That's what I do, I use a Dell SFF system running Pfsense, with Ubiquiti NanoHD AP's for WiFi. Runs great, no issues and after set-up it just works.

 

[Rabtech]

I use a custom whitebox in a SilverStone SST-ML05B, i5 4590T (35W), 8GB Ram, 16GB SSD and an Intel low profile dual NIC with pfsense, netgear managed/poe switches and a unifi AP, plenty of horsepower. The 4th/6th Gen Dell/HP SFF units as mentioned previously are dirt cheap, bung in a dual/quad intel NIC. The Qotom boxes are nice for space saving and ultra lower power usage but you certainly do pay the price for it.

 

[Mat_]

We live in a world where an i3 6100 SFF inc RAM/HDD costs £60-70.

Where are you finding them quite that cheap? I seem to be looking around £100+ on ebay.

That being said, an i3-6100 seems on a par with the RX-427BB in the HP T730 that I was looking at for pfSense before coming across your post. i3-6100 machines seem slightly cheaper and better power consumption but not quite so SFF.

 

[Avalon]

eBay - I grabbed a Lenovo S510 for 59.99 delivered, similar spec Dell I had on my watch list went for 69.99, just got to keep an eye out.

 

[Mikey]

Considering selling some of my kit and swapping CPU on the system for a i7-6700T

 

[Avalon]

Considering selling some of my kit and swapping CPU on the system for a i7-6700T

Remember that Intel’s power gating means in idle terms, T chips aren’t massively different from desktop chips of the same generation core for core, if you have a base number of watts measured first, it makes it easier to evaluate cost against what you think you’ll save on power, but generally it’ll take a long, long term to justify in power savings.

 

[Mikey]

True, just looking at options. Ideally looking for 4 cores or more as Suricata is only single core app.

 

[ThomP]

Running pfsense here.. I originally picked up an i3 6100 Dell SFF with 4G RAM/HDD for £75 (eBay) runs absolutely fine, that's with FTTP, 10+ VLANs, Suricatta & OpenVPN. I also installed a cheap SSD 48/64GB for boot.