new hardware

[Duncan]

hi i am now running opnsense on a dell VEP 1405.
but gives poor perfomance with ips on (CPU 100%)

i want to buy new hardware an want to make it again a 10G setup.
with intel SFP+nics

but what do you reccommend AMD or Intel as CPU and why?

no blade server its for an home setup so sound is an issue.

[rungekutta]

I'm in a similar position. Have been eyeing up the SuperMicro Epyc embedded boards (Epyc 3101 or 3201) - in many ways they are perfect, with 4 built-in Nics and a free PCIe slot to add more as required, and low power and small form factor. But they are getting quite old and still based on Zen 1, and I don't know if they have enough grunt to drive 10Gb. Current gen Ryzen (or Epyc) are nearly 50% faster single-core according to benchmarks.

Given that, and if sound is an issue, I think a recent'ish business desktop (e.g. Dell Optiplex or HP EliteDesk) with an added Nic is the best bang for the buck. However there would typically only be one (1) PCIe slot available. So ok for a quad gigabit Nic, or dual SFP+, but not both at the same time. That's however what I'm looking for, so currently leaning towards a custom Ryzen or Xeon E-2200 build based on a server uATX motherboard (SuperMicro or ASRock Rack) and carefully chosen case and fans to keep noise levels to minimum. Should be doable.

[bartjsmit]

Compare electrical power (Watt) with compute power (cores x frequency) to get a rough idea about noise vs performance.

I've been biased towards Intel ever since AMD CPU's would literally cook themselves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxNUK3U73SI

Admittedly a very long time ago in chip technology terms and everybody dropped the ball on branch prediction since then but AMD is still the same company with the same engineering, QA, etc.

YMMV massively

Bart...

[Duncan]

i am looking for the same thing and 2nics (SFP+) should be enough for me.
but i do not want that my next CPU will be a bottleneck for this system.

@Bart thank you Intel it will be than

[rungekutta]

Re heat and power consumption, I think it’s quite the opposite these days. The Ryzens are much more power efficient than Intel, due to various things, including AMD’s 7nm manufacturing process.

See here from Anandtech where they provide some examples and measurements:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16343/intel-core-i710700-vs-core-i710700k-review-is-65w-comet-lake-an-option/23

PS I don’t know know what would happen these days if you removed the cooler… but I note that video is from 2001 ;-)

[ConnorXXL]

Same requirements and thinking here...

The OPNsense hardware offers are nice too, however a bit too expensive for me... https://shop.opnsense.com/product-categorie/hardware-appliances/
(And SFP+ is covered too...)

Supermicro has the E200 and E300 series which are by default noisy, can be silenced with Noctua fans though.

CPU wise an Atom might like 3758 might not be a bad choice too. Can be bought second hand regularly...

It's quite difficult to find something halfway between a APU2 and the real server/enterprise stuff...

[rungekutta]

The higher end OPNsense hardware uses Epyc embedded (3101 and 3201), and comes with 10Gb but “only” claim 2Gb/s with IDS. Nice and small and fanless, but again, not quite enough grunt to do the line capacity full justice.

Meanwhile, higher end enterprise stuff with beefy Xeons or Epycs will certainly do the job but not something you want to put in your bedroom cupboard or living room…

Until AMD or Intel updates their embedded series, I think the way forward is custom build with desktop CPU on server m/board (in order to get enough ports). Current gen desktop CPUs are crazy fast and quite power efficient, particularly the Ryzen 5000 series.

Edit: and motherboards something like SuperMicro X11SCL-LN4F or ASRock Rack X470D4U or X570D4U