Firewall/ Router HW suggestions - do you recommend Zimaboard

[meazz1]

I need some recommendation for my next HW.
I am using an x86 fan less PC with 2 ports but need to get a new hardware. The X86 is about to die any day.
I'm looking into Zimaboard 432.
I have an At&t gig fiber, the At&t modem is set for Passthru mode.
I have 2 Unifi AP AC Lite an Unifi 8-60 POE switch.
I am not using any VLANs but would like to take advantage of the At&t IPV6 as well.

We are 4 users in the house, 8 to 10 cameras, few streaming devices and 2 of us work from home.
My budged is $200.00 US range.

Any advice or suggestions?

[newsense]

Closest in that budget range would be one of the 4x2.5Gb appliances with N5105 from Aliexpress - look at the reviews Patrick made on ServeTheHome.


Better (firmware updates) yet pricier options you can find from Protectli


From Deciso one of the best options would be DEC750 or above.



All of theese options would be passively cooled and future proof. Anything lower and you'd be hard pressed justifying the gig fiber.

[vpx23]

The DEC750 is about 1,000 EUR, that's above the limit of $200.

https://www.varia-store.com/en/produkt/294371-dec750-opnsense-reg-desktop-security-appliance.html

The Zimaboard 432 looks fine for the job, it has 2x Realtek 8111H NICs (which support RSS). But even if you have a problem with them you could still plug in some Intel NICs into the PCIe 2.0 x4 extension port on the side like this guy did:

https://www.martinrowan.co.uk/2022/05/installing-pfsense-2-6-on-zimaboard/

[meazz1]

Update:
I ended up buying a bare bone from Alibaba for $117.00. I installed 16 gig ram and a 500 gb M.2 2280 NVMe ssd.
I installed Opnsense 23.7.3 and been up for 24+ hrs. So far no issue.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805037671566.html?spm=a2g0o.order_detail.order_detail_item.3.629df19cS64dCK&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa

[newsense]

Seems like a good choice.

Two things to consider:

1) Watch your temps for a while

2) Install os-hw-probe. It will send anonymized hardware diagnostics to https://bsd-hardware.info and allow for any potential HW issues/quirks to be identified, prioritized and fixed in FreeBSD in due time

[meazz1]

The Core 0,1,2,3 (dev.cpu.0.temperature) is always hovering at 52.0 degree C but some time spikes to 58 C for a second or so.
The Zone 0 (hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature) is at 27.9 c constant.

I juts installed os-hw-probe.

[Seimus]

I recently bought as well a N5105 system from Ali from the TopTop shop and reviewed it a bit. On this forum there is a post for this SOC

https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=27938.15

Have a look.

Currently running the system with only OPN in barebone setup and so far didn't hit any problems.

Regards,
S.

[meazz1]

Is there a benchmark of some sort for this zones?
Are this numbers within acceptable range with browsing in 2 laptops, couple of streaming devices and 3 phones?

The Core 0,1,2,3 (dev.cpu.0.temperature) 52.0 degree C
Zone 0 (hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature) is at 27.9 c constant.

[vpx]

The temperatures look reasonable for a passive cooled device without any fans.

If you want CPU temperatures in the range of 30-40 °C you need active CPU cooling or at least a case fan.

[Seimus]

Is there a benchmark of some sort for this zones?
Are this numbers within acceptable range with browsing in 2 laptops, couple of streaming devices and 3 phones?

The Core 0,1,2,3 (dev.cpu.0.temperature) 52.0 degree C
Zone 0 (hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature) is at 27.9 c constant.

Pretty good temps, better than mine but on the other-hand I have pretty loaded OPN with features. This are very reasonable temps you got there. Did you do any additional tuning like playing with BIOS and the PL states or is this out of the box + OPN during load?

Regards,
S.

[meazz1]

I did not do any tuning.
This is with normal daily usage for the household of 3 adults.

[Seimus]

Superb,

These are good temps for a passive cooled device with an N5105 chip.

I have my in a small rack so get higher temperatures during summer. In order to accommodate for that I did adjust C states to C3.

For the sake of testing, I opened the rack temps dropped from 70C with 28C room temp to 55-60C at max during load.

So dont be bothered by the temps, they are dam good what you got there.

Regards,
S.