Hardware sizing: Is a 345W Server PSU total overkill for a dedicated OPNsense bo

[pfry]

[...]Sadly you won't see something like this for any DELL/HPE/SuperMicro PSU[...]

True, you generally don't see anyone tearing down a server PS. But some are here.

[Night_Sailor]

I'm very new to OPNsense.   I got my start watching David Plumb on YouTube. My prime motivation is to isolate my IP video cameras from the rest of the world. And I've always been interested in networking. I did it for a living 25 years ago and I've since upgraded my network to 10 G fiber spanning several buildings supporting family members, IOT, backup file server numerous computers.

I bought a dual port 10G N105 off Amazon for OPNsense, which took 2 1/2 weeks to arrive shipped from China only to discover it had a bad drive controller on the motherboard.

I didn't want to order another one as I wanted to get my firewall configured up and running then it occurred to me. I could use an old file server that has been sitting on the shelf unused for a long time. I pulled it off removes the 16TB hard drive and installed a dual port Intel NIC.

It's been running great for me with a 300 W power supply and that gives me a little headroom to perhaps later upgrade the CPU to one with more cores.

My long term goal is to support the full 10G bandwidth, increase the cores, as I upgrade my ISP service. 

To me
300 watts is low comfort food. I'd put 360'watts in the same category.  Plenty and likely only using half of that.

[meyergru]

Bad luck on the firewall box (although you probably got your money back from Amazon), congratulations on your electricity rates.

But: depending on where you live, half of 360 Watts running 24/7 sets you back 180/1000*24*365 kWh * 0,30€/kWh = 473€ per year (that is about average in Germany). So, in just something over one year, a (working) specimen of an N1x0 box is amortized, because that only sips 15 Watts.

Reality is a little better, hopefully, because even these things do not even use half of 180 Watts permanently, but you catch the drift...

[pfry]

A 180W idle is a bit high, unless you have a CRT attached to it. I'd toss out 50W as a reasonably high estimate with a sleeping LCD, which would make the difference ~90€/y, or, at $.14/kWh, ~$40. Point still taken, of course.

With a 10W firewall (Fortigate 61E), two small servers, KVM, display, and UPS, I drew ~85W. With a 45W firewall, bigger servers and two UPSs it's up near 200W, and really requires auxiliary cooling for the room in the summer (>86F/30C daytime ambient) ("summer" is ~20 days > 100F/38C; max ~113F/45C). A bit painful. But I've blown >$2000/y on Internet service for 30 years, so the pain is a bit like stubbing my toe on a land mine.