qotom i5-5250U

[elektroinside]

PPPoE is single threaded as well, so another reason to get a CPU with very good single-core performance

[GPz1100]

@hutiucip

I5 5250 supports vt-d, the other one does not.  This is necessary in virtualization to allow pci passthrough.  That is direct access to peripherals rather than emulation.  Example, exsi does not allow tagged vlan 0 traffic through their network stack.  Using pci passthrough the nic can be configured for direct access by VM allowing access to full capabilities of the nic.

[Ciprian]

Thank you very much, GPz1100!

[apiods]

Hi, resurrecting this old thread as I'm interested in buying Qotom box...

2 models I'm looking at on Aliexpress:
Qotom Q355G4 (Intel Core i5 Processor, 5200U)
Qotom Q370G4 (Intel Core i7 Processor, 4500U)

There's £10 in it - a few comments on this thread suggested the i7 was probably the preferred option.
Sound reasonable choice still ?!

Thanks 

[banym]

But to be clear on the CPU performance, it is only important if you have the WAN bandwidth or internal need for the speed.

For the most firewalls and even routes I run, Atom or embedded CPUs still good enough. Single core frequency >=2.4GHz and everything looks good for me.

Only if you're talking about VPN with more than 200MBits the CPU performance is important. I know this becomes more and more important since the available bandwidth is growing fast. For most usecases the i5 with AES-NI will fit the needs for 95%

More important are good network chips with good driver support and options to tweak.

[apiods]

But to be clear on the CPU performance, it is only important if you have the WAN bandwidth or internal need for the speed.

Thanks - makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, you are correct - I don't have the DSL speed to need i7 (or even i5 !). But I'm okay with some overkill, so I think the i5 will do!

[bartjsmit]

I would go for the i5 since it is a newer generation (Broadwell vs Haswell).

You have considerations other than line speed. Do you want to run Suricata or VPN? Either will need some compute resource.

Bart...

[marjohn56]

I still don't understand why they would kick you for that?  Odd indeed.

Because Netgate hate Qotom, and any mention of Qotom will probably get you an instant ban. They do not want you to buy someone else's hardware, they want you to buy their overpriced hardware. Qotom install pfsense for you if you want it, after all it's supposed to be free & open source.