Upgrade dilemma - stay with i5 Dell or switch to J4105 minipc

[simdim]

Hi All,
I am running Opensense on Dell OptiPlex 990 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz (4 cores, 4 threads) 16GB with Intel I225 Chipset (2.5G) on WAN side and INTEL I350T4 1GbE Quad Port Ethernet Server on LANs side.
HD is starting to show some errors so it is time to replace.

The question is should I just get SSD 512G drive and call it good or switch to something like "Qotom Q730G5-S08 Latest New J4105 2.5G 5*LAN Firewall Router,Support DDR4,16G RAM 512G SSD" (not sure if Amazon links are allowed)
I am using NtopNG and UnboundDNS in addition to standard FW.

[passeri]

I think I have seen vendor links here before.

Quandary: save money now, or reduce waste heat and capacity?

It might also depend a bit on whether you have a potential use for the i5 box, which looks over-spec for your apparent requirement. You can verify that by looking at load factors. I am guessing they are under 1.

[opnfwb]

My 2c is that if you choose to change out the entire unit, go with something that has a newer CPU. A J6412 or N100 based system.

My own personal system now is an old J3455 that I've had running for the last 6 years. It sips power and maxes at 14w draw. It will do full gigabit up/down but I don't do any kind of IDS/IPS, so that saves a lot of spare CPU cycles.

If I was buying again today, there are much newer CPUs that still fit in that 10/15w range. The J4xxx series is very close to the J3xxx series in terms of per-core performance.

[nero355]

i5-2400

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/52207/intel-core-i52400-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz/specifications.html

J4105

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/128989/intel-celeron-j4105-processor-4m-cache-up-to-2-50-ghz/specifications.html

The J4105 is 6 years newer, but still very old these days, so I don't see the point in buying one to be honest...


Just buy a nice new cheapass 120/240 GB SSD for your current setup and use it until it implodes or something :)