Greetings People of OPNsense,
I have a 5-6 year old desktop that I planned to use with OPNsense. However it came with the infamous Intel Vpro and the Management Engine / AMT "features". A surprise bonus, not mentioned in the listing! It listed a 6 core i5-10500 cpu, 16gig ram, and 256gig NVME storage. New hardware with specs like those would be faster (not really needed), but probably 3-4 times more expensive.
Intel's CSME vulnerability detection tool reports the firmware patched, and the unit was made 3 years after the big scandal broke over the remote administration "feature." It has the most recent vendor firmware which got applied immediately after the shipping carton was opened.
How bad an idea would it be to use this system as a router?
A) A bad idea
B) A Truly Stupid idea bordering on lunacy
or
C) Maybe no worse a risk than using a cheap router made in a faraway land and sold in big electronics chain stores.
or, something else?
I just don't have the money right now for serious gear with the cost of ram, etc. I did drop $25 in the Donation jar last night.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Just disable whatever bothers you in the BIOS/UEFI and use it for OPNsense or Proxmox + OPNsense ?!
Also check if there are any BIOS/UEFI updates or alternatives like CoreBoot/LibreBoot/etc. for the used Mainboard :)
" ... a 6 core i5-10500 cpu, 16gig ram, and 256gig NVME ... " - for me that sounds pretty serious gear for opnsense. Already paid for hardware vs higher wattage usage with mini pc you should consider the years the new fancy mini pc has to last in working condition before it's a breakeven just for the electricity bill. Of course you can try to sell your current in pieces or a whole package - it might get sold easily.
I used an old AMD Kabini 5350 with 60GB ocz for 7-8 years - they were still going on when they got changed to Ryzen 5600 with mirroring zfs ssd:s and yes surprisingly(?) with even higher wattage being used than an mini pc would. If I wanted/needed lower wattage I would consider Lenovos m920x tiny. The 'x' gives 2 nvme slots. But I'll be satisfied with more modern 4 ports intel nic than the current 82571.
Quote from: petri on April 12, 2026, 01:50:55 PMIf I wanted/needed lower wattage I would consider Lenovos m920x tiny.
You don't need Thin Clients or Mini PCs/NUCs for low power consumption setups : It can be done with DIY PC builds too! :)
Used PC for OPNsense, that's a large percentage of us in this forum. Mine is currently running on an old Supermicro server with approximately a gen 4 series of processor (it's a Xeon e 1200 series). The lowest performance version I have running is an old HP T620+, but it's only handling my lab now.
As said above, that computer is a pretty serious amount of horsepower, should work well enough. Certainly well enough to test and decide if you want some different hardware like an n100 or n150 based system (or higher).
Quote from: Greg_E on April 14, 2026, 05:16:05 PMwith approximately a gen 4 series of processor (it's a Xeon e 1200 series).
Xeon E3 models from the 1200 Series (1230/1240/etc.) have v1/v2/v3/v4/v5 after their model name IIRC, so : 1230v3/1230v4/1230v5/etc.
That should tell you the exact generation :)
Examples :
- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/75054/intel-xeon-processor-e31230-v3-8m-cache-3-30-ghz/specifications.html
- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/88182/intel-xeon-processor-e31230-v5-8m-cache-3-40-ghz/specifications.html
The same goes for their E5 family members like the E5-2650 :
- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/64590/intel-xeon-processor-e52650-20m-cache-2-00-ghz-8-00-gts-intel-qpi/specifications.html
- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/75269/intel-xeon-processor-e52650-v2-20m-cache-2-60-ghz/specifications.html
- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/81705/intel-xeon-processor-e52650-v3-25m-cache-2-30-ghz/specifications.html
I believe mine is a v2, generally too lazy to log in and check it. I've had a for many years and took it out of service as a Windows Server box a few years ago. I started to get concerned about the age of my previous firewall, and that it had pf on it. so spun up a test on an HP T740 with OPN, liked what I saw and moved it to one of these old servers. Trying to buy a DEC2770, but the price keeps going up and my request keeps getting denied.
Personally I use an Optiplex 3060 I picked up rather cheaply for my OPNsense router. Sure it's not exactly small or anything, but it works for me. It's also massive overkill with an i5-8500 and 12GB of RAM, but it was around $150 or so.
IMO the power bills are too high with hardware like that. Better buy a cheap N100 system or something similar. Or at least that was true before the techbros bought all the RAM.
Quote from: Stormscape on April 15, 2026, 09:14:38 AMPersonally I use an Optiplex 3060 I picked up rather cheaply for my OPNsense router. Sure it's not exactly small or anything, but it works for me. It's also massive overkill with an i5-8500 and 12GB of RAM, but it was around $150 or so.
I'm using a Dell 7060 SFF i7-6700 8GB ram 256GB Samsung nvme drive and an Aliexpress 2 port i226 card. Total cost $150.
Any of the china boxes with N100 or something similar are going to be over $500 with some ram and an ssd.
These off lease office machines are cheap and plentiful. Anything goes wrong with it, you can swap out the NIC or swap out the entire box. I've seen reports on these AliExpress boxes where a nic port goes bad or something else goes wrong with it like power supply and they are rendered virtually useless.
Quote from: bimbar on April 15, 2026, 11:11:39 AMIMO the power bills are too high with hardware like that. Better buy a cheap N100 system or something similar. Or at least that was true before the techbros bought all the RAM.
I suppose it depends on where you live and the cost of electricity. It would take over 5 years to break even for me to invest in a small low powered N100 box. The Dell box I have idles around 22 watts. Most of the time it spends idling.
I pay 12 cents Canadian per kWh (8 cents USD, 7 Eurocents, 6 pence) so my router would have to be using a truly biblical amount of power before I'd consider changing it to something else.
Quote from: Stormscape on April 16, 2026, 07:35:14 AMI pay 12 cents Canadian per kWh (8 cents USD, 7 Eurocents, 6 pence) so my router would have to be using a truly biblical amount of power before I'd consider changing it to something else.
Well, I pay 27 cents european.
With the prices on a lot of new stuff, if you can get used at a bargain, use what you can find.
I tired to price out a Supermicro, they no longer make anything in the firewall category, everything starts at about $3000 for bare board and chassis.
I have one of my vendors pricing Protectly boxes for me, and comparing to the price of a DEC2770 that I may or may not be able to buy here in the USA. Kind of hoping this vendor will decide that selling OPNsense software and hardware might be a good business model, they are international so it might be in their best interest. That said, the price on the DEC2770 has nearly double since I first starting asking about 2 years ago, budget has never been approved and now we will pay for that. If I have no choice, I can stick a NIC into one of our common workstations and let that run for a few years. Not my first choice, but a definite backup plan.
Hi,
I have a couple of old Dell Optiplex SFF PCs, a 7010 with an i5-3470 @3.2GHz and 3020 i5-3470@3.2Ghz (active and backup) both equipped with igb0 dual nic cards. I noticed that the 7010 had two 16x PCI slots so added two intel x550-t2 cards and replaced the 3020. With the 3020 I was getting latency issues connecting to the upstream router, since swapping no issues.
When I ping the Opnsense (Optiplex 7010) LAN interface, WAN interface and the upstream router, the results are as follows
LAN round-trip (ms) min/avg/max/stddev = 0.128/0.149/0.288/0.028
WAN round-trip (ms) min/avg/max/stddev = 0.139/0.166/0.299/0.036
Router round-trip (ms) min/avg/max/stddev = 0.387/0.598/2.268/0.367 (not a direct connection but via 4 port switch)
I have ordered a second Dell Optiplex 7010 as a backup to current Optiplex 7010.
With reference to CPU utilisation it peaks around 15% with 15 clients accessing the internet
May 4th be with you - ordered refurbished Dell 7010 received refurbished Dell 9010 same specification i5-3470, pci-e buses so cards nic detected without problem