Mini-ITX + dual LAN motherboard

jameshurrell · 24 Mar 2015 at 10:19

I'm looking to put together a little mini-ITX build to house a Sophos UTM and looking for a bit of advice. I did an ATX build about 2 years ago and it was very easy and I enjoyed it, so eager to try this new build.

The main requirements are a mini-ITX motherboard that has dual onboard LANs (one for the "WAN" side and one for the "LAN" side) low power consumption, minimal heat output and quiet - this box is going to sit in a cupboard out of site and be left switched on permanently. I guess therefore that I'm looking at a low TDP CPU (probably an Intel i3 "T" processor) and a small case that will do passive cooling.

Sophos UTM hardware requirements are pretty minimal, and I only have ADSL2+ here at the moment, so I don't need overkill.

I don't really know where to begin, but it seems that the dual LAN motherboard is probably a good place to start... any ideas?

Legion · 24 Mar 2015 at 10:36

This is one of the few dual Lan ITX boards that I know of:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5253#ov

whiskycycle · 24 Mar 2015 at 14:23

Want to do the same myself... been looking at finding one of these: Gigabyte.

Can't see any gotchas as why it won't work and it's got the required dual NIC. Would be nice to tinkering with the free UTM appliance.

jameshurrell · 24 Mar 2015 at 15:57

Thanks Legion - yes, I had found that board myself - it looks good.

Undergroove - that's an interesting find. The CPU stats are here: http://ark.intel.com/products/78867/Intel-Celeron-Processor-J1900-2M-Cache-up-to-2_42-GHz

10W TDP as well. But Amazon reviews of the board are less than favourable although most issues are with the first version of the BIOS which was rubbish by all accounts.

Yes, I've installed the Sophos UTM in a client's production environment on an SG210 (one of their hardware appliances). It really is a very powerful UTM and pretty easy to configure. Looking to build this for home - mainly to prevent nasties and block certain sites from the kids.

cokecan · 24 Mar 2015 at 16:08

I was looking for the same earlier this year and decided to go for the MSI Z87i. Got a good price for the AC version and ended up using the AC wifi adapter in my laptop

jameshurrell · 24 Mar 2015 at 20:21

cokecan said:
I was looking for the same earlier this year and decided to go for the MSI Z87i. Got a good price for the AC version and ended up using the AC wifi adapter in my laptop

That board only has single LAN by the looks - did you use it with Sophos UTM or were you just looking for a similar low power mini-ITX board?