> > Recommendation for a very capable router are C2750/C2758 Supermicro > > So, do you think we'd *need* a board like that?
Depends on your specific requirements in terms of expected bottlenecks. > The reason I ask is > that they're nearly twice the price of other dual-gigE Atom boards, > and the ECC SODIMMs don't help. ECC RAM always helps in the long term, if the board is collocated this can save you a trip or two / remote hands fees. Even for home use ECC is considered a reliability feature (at about 5-15% annual rate of random memory errors) if the device is powered 24/7. > If you're saying that an old D525 can > handle our traffic needs and is well supported, I'm don't think > springing for this board makes sense. I am saying it handles my specific needs since early 2011 and also saying that newer Atoms are preferred if budget allows this, for added performance in the same thermal dissipation and power usage. Regarding price, if you plan to use a Supermicro board, those are more expensive than comparable other brands, even more expensive than comparable Intel boards. At the time I was shopping the best available Atom offers were D525 boards from Supermicro. I could have dealt away with an Intel board and still be happy (lower priced other boards were not yet listed), but I'd not have IMPI & serial BIOS (out of band) access. D525 is an older Atom CPU on ICH9R chipset and a lot less capable compared to newer Atoms, especially the ones recommended. It does not have the VT-* (think virtualisation) extensions, but a router or storage appliance does not need these. http://ark.intel.com/products/49490/Intel-Atom-Processor-D525-1M-Cache-1_80-GHz With a grain of salt as the benchmarks are unreliable source of performance comparisons (and these promote a utility): http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+D525+%40+1.80GHz $ md5 -tt MD5 time trial. Processing 100000 10000-byte blocks... Digest = 766a2bb5d24bddae466c572bcabca3ee Time = 4.094940 seconds Speed = 244203822.278226 bytes/second Here is one good board: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA-HF-D525.cfm If you want to use X, stick a cheap low power fanless single slot Radeon HD5450 in it, this supports OK up to dual link DVI 2560x1440 + VGA 1920x1200 together. The included in the mainboard Matrox G200eW video works OK to boot up and with special tweaking has worked for X but not at the moment. With the added video card the system works quite responsive for a low power on board soldered processor driven desktop. The system can run headless with no monitor/keyboard entirely commanded over the serial port including BIOS access. Serial over LAN works OK too, but serial 3 wire does not depend on network. Always consider a spare monitor & keyboard attached / around the system just in case. There is no point in using more than 4 GB RAM, though there are reports it can boot with 8 GB RAM, those are silly tricks. The CPU spec says it can address 4 GB and the mainboard spec as well 4 GB. Pick good RAM exactly timed per the spec as the board will not boot up with unreliable funky cheap RAM and you will be glad in the long term for the RAM choice. This board is not your choice for ZFS/RAID fate abuse, but works great for a NAS provider, this comment is in regard to the 8 GB silliness. This system does not support ECC RAM. http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-x7spehfd525-8gb-ddr3-ipmi-pfsense-freenas-unraid-linux-power-consumption/ The total power consumption bare is about 35-40 W, if you plan to populate more than 1 of the 6 SATA ports, consider a reliable 200 W PSU so it can function halfway loaded. These 200 W specify total power summary across voltages and are maximum power load before failure, not normal working (at efficient levels) power use. Even with no drives, still pick a 200 W PSU standard form factor case. The 2 LAN GigE ports are enough for a router, one is shared for IPMI. These are just fine in OpenBSD as em(4) devices. I'll put the dmesg later in the message, no glitches for years, happily saturate the network with SSH & rsync. Everything works great on the board and is well supported, I have it and this runs flawless almost idle since 2011 when I bought it. IPMI works as advertised, you have to patch the BIOS & IPMI firmwares to close vulnerability (in IPMI) and confine the IMPI (shared LAN) on local network only even with proper set up. It will need a case fan (or two for redundancy) because the CPU is fanless and produces enough heat (about 15-20 W TDP) and even without a Radeon added (20 W more) inside, the system can not rely on free air convection in a tower / desktop small form factor (mini-ITX) case. Remember, these boards are designed to be put in controlled temperature environments in 1U rack mount cases where air is flowing through the chassis. You can't leave it just heat up the temperature sensitive components (capacitors, HDDs) without shortening their life. http://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-cse502l200b-mitx-matx-1u-atom-server-chassis-review/ Don't listen to suggestions that a fanless CPU requires no fan in the home use case. If you can, get a case with a 12 cm fan to pass air through the system quietly. Note: this site title has nothing to do with "serving home" projects. This is a collocation chassis where air is 22-25 degC and air flows through the chassis. The fan on this rack mount chassis PSU is loud, so don't buy it for home use and it can't hold more than 1/2 drives depending on form factor. This system can be combined to serve as a storage device (quite OK for moderate use as archive system unless you need heavy I/O) or a small server (again moderate load), even router + storage + server is OK yet consider the bottleneck is your external network and it's not a good idea to mix roles. All systems age and fail, and on the most reliable, operators wreck havoc. In this line of thought, you can use any other inexpensive D525 board when operators are unreliable or you want to save money, but you'll miss the chance to learn and use the advanced capabilities or more reliable components on board. Note about price, this has not come down for new boards, maybe about 5-10% fluctuation due to overpricing originally. If you can, add more money and get a newer Atom CPU that has the VT-* extensions, and don't buy used boards if you plan to rely on the system. Components age even if not used, so storing one inexpensive clone motherboard to replace the one that just failed can surprise you as not such a redundant solution. Here is a list of other Atom boards from Supermicro: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ The global SKU means it is more likely to be carried by your (near) local dealer. If price is not a problem, go for the C2000 series. Buy a new PSU, don't use an old unreliable one, PSUs become less reliable over time due to ageing of capacitors and solder joints, plus chances increase over the years the switching components reach failure. Don't use external brick / micro / pico type PSU units, those are not offering any benefit over stock SFX/ATX form factor and are less than reliable to say the least not mention interchangeable. The PSU is one of the least reliable system blocks. There is absolutely no point in considering SSD for this system. It can boot OK from the USB port on the mainboard near the SATA connectors, but it's slow in file I/O. Better use is for a key storage / configuration backup. For only router, the internal USB works OK, but is again slow to work with updates and storage I/O. This would not affect routing capabilities though. If you plan to rely on the system, use reliable classic 3.5 inch HDD drives and put a fan in front of them. Here is the dmesg for you and everyone planning to utilise this mainboard: OpenBSD 5.8 (GENERIC.MP) #1201: Tue Jul 28 00:16:59 MDT 2015 dera...@amd64.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC.MP real mem = 4277665792 (4079MB) avail mem = 4144132096 (3952MB) mpath0 at root scsibus0 at mpath0: 256 targets mainbus0 at root bios0 at mainbus0: SMBIOS rev. 2.6 @ 0x9ac00 (19 entries) bios0: vendor American Megatrends Inc. version "1.2b" date 07/19/13 bios0: Supermicro X7SPA-HF acpi0 at bios0: rev 2 acpi0: sleep states S0 S1 S3 S4 S5 acpi0: tables DSDT FACP APIC MCFG OEMB HPET EINJ BERT ERST HEST acpi0: wakeup devices P0P1(S4) PS2K(S4) PS2M(S4) USB0(S4) USB1(S4) USB2(S4) USB5(S4) EUSB(S4) USB3(S4) USB4(S4) USB6(S4) USBE(S4) P0P4(S4) P0P5(S4) P0P6(S4) P0P7(S4) [...] acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor) cpu0: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D525 @ 1.80GHz, 2880.27 MHz cpu0: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,MOVBE,NXE,LONG,LAHF,PERF,SENSOR cpu0: 512KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache cpu0: smt 0, core 0, package 0 mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support, 8 var ranges, 88 fixed ranges cpu0: apic clock running at 200MHz cpu0: mwait min=64, max=64, C-substates=0.1, IBE cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 2 (application processor) cpu1: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D525 @ 1.80GHz, 1800.01 MHz cpu1: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,MOVBE,NXE,LONG,LAHF,PERF,SENSOR cpu1: 512KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache cpu1: smt 0, core 1, package 0 cpu2 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor) cpu2: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D525 @ 1.80GHz, 1800.01 MHz cpu2: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,MOVBE,NXE,LONG,LAHF,PERF,SENSOR cpu2: 512KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache cpu2: smt 1, core 0, package 0 cpu3 at mainbus0: apid 3 (application processor) cpu3: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU D525 @ 1.80GHz, 1800.01 MHz cpu3: FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CFLUSH,DS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE,SSE3,DTES64,MWAIT,DS-CPL,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,MOVBE,NXE,LONG,LAHF,PERF,SENSOR cpu3: 512KB 64b/line 8-way L2 cache cpu3: smt 1, core 1, package 0 ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 4 pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 24 pins ioapic0: misconfigured as apic 1, remapped to apid 4 acpimcfg0 at acpi0 addr 0xe0000000, bus 0-255 acpihpet0 at acpi0: 14318179 Hz acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0) acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus 4 (P0P1) acpiprt2 at acpi0: bus 1 (P0P4) acpiprt3 at acpi0: bus 2 (P0P8) acpiprt4 at acpi0: bus 3 (P0P9) acpicpu0 at acpi0 acpicpu1 at acpi0 acpicpu2 at acpi0 acpicpu3 at acpi0 acpibtn0 at acpi0: SLPB acpibtn1 at acpi0: PWRB ipmi at mainbus0 not configured pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0 pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel Pineview DMI" rev 0x02 uhci0 at pci0 dev 26 function 0 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 4 int 16 uhci1 at pci0 dev 26 function 1 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 4 int 21 uhci2 at pci0 dev 26 function 2 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 4 int 19 ehci0 at pci0 dev 26 function 7 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 4 int 18 usb0 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0 uhub0 at usb0 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1 ppb0 at pci0 dev 28 function 0 "Intel 82801I PCIE" rev 0x02: msi pci1 at ppb0 bus 1 ppb1 at pci0 dev 28 function 4 "Intel 82801I PCIE" rev 0x02: msi pci2 at ppb1 bus 2 em0 at pci2 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82574L" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:25:90:06:f2:ae ppb2 at pci0 dev 28 function 5 "Intel 82801I PCIE" rev 0x02: msi pci3 at ppb2 bus 3 em1 at pci3 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82574L" rev 0x00: msi, address 00:25:90:06:f2:af uhci3 at pci0 dev 29 function 0 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 4 int 23 uhci4 at pci0 dev 29 function 1 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 4 int 19 uhci5 at pci0 dev 29 function 2 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 4 int 18 ehci1 at pci0 dev 29 function 7 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 4 int 23 usb1 at ehci1: USB revision 2.0 uhub1 at usb1 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1 ppb3 at pci0 dev 30 function 0 "Intel 82801BA Hub-to-PCI" rev 0x92 pci4 at ppb3 bus 4 vga1 at pci4 dev 4 function 0 "Matrox MGA G200eW" rev 0x0a wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation) wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation) pcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0 "Intel 82801IR LPC" rev 0x02 ahci0 at pci0 dev 31 function 2 "Intel 82801I AHCI" rev 0x02: msi, AHCI 1.2 ahci0: port 0: 3.0Gb/s scsibus1 at ahci0: 32 targets sd0 at scsibus1 targ 0 lun 0: <ATA, WDC WD1600AAJS-0, 01.0> SCSI3 0/direct fixed naa.50014ee0017be69e sd0: 152627MB, 512 bytes/sector, 312581808 sectors ichiic0 at pci0 dev 31 function 3 "Intel 82801I SMBus" rev 0x02: apic 4 int 18 iic0 at ichiic0 lm1 at iic0 addr 0x2d: W83627DHG spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x50: 2GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-10600 SO-DIMM spdmem1 at iic0 addr 0x51: 2GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-10600 SO-DIMM usb2 at uhci0: USB revision 1.0 uhub2 at usb2 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1 usb3 at uhci1: USB revision 1.0 uhub3 at usb3 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1 usb4 at uhci2: USB revision 1.0 uhub4 at usb4 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1 usb5 at uhci3: USB revision 1.0 uhub5 at usb5 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1 usb6 at uhci4: USB revision 1.0 uhub6 at usb6 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1 usb7 at uhci5: USB revision 1.0 uhub7 at usb7 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1 isa0 at pcib0 isadma0 at isa0 com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8/8 irq 3: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo com2 at isa0 port 0x3e8/8 irq 5: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo com2: console pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5 irq 1 irq 12 pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot) wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0 pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61 spkr0 at pcppi0 wbsio0 at isa0 port 0x2e/2: W83627DHG rev 0x25 umass0 at uhub0 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0 "JetFlash Mass Storage Device" rev 2.00/11.00 addr 2 umass0: using SCSI over Bulk-Only scsibus2 at umass0: 2 targets, initiator 0 sd1 at scsibus2 targ 1 lun 0: <JetFlash, Transcend 16GB, 1100> SCSI0 0/direct removable serial.090c1000SK3MJMC0SMA4 sd1: 15296MB, 512 bytes/sector, 31326208 sectors axe0 at uhub1 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0 "ASIX Electronics AX88772B" rev 2.00/0.01 addr 2 axe0: AX88772B, address 00:80:8e:8d:8c:40 ukphy0 at axe0 phy 16: Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface, rev. 1: OUI 0x000ec6, model 0x0008 uhub8 at uhub1 port 5 "Terminus Technology USB 2.0 Hub" rev 2.00/1.11 addr 3 uhub9 at uhub8 port 1 "Terminus Technology USB 2.0 Hub" rev 2.00/1.11 addr 4 uhidev0 at uhub9 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0 "vendor 0x13ba Barcode Reader" rev 1.10/0.01 addr 5 uhidev0: iclass 3/1 ukbd0 at uhidev0: 8 variable keys, 6 key codes wskbd1 at ukbd0 mux 1 wskbd1: connecting to wsdisplay0 uhidev1 at uhub9 port 1 configuration 1 interface 1 "vendor 0x13ba Barcode Reader" rev 1.10/0.01 addr 5 uhidev1: iclass 3/1, 3 report ids ums0 at uhidev1 reportid 1: 5 buttons, Z dir wsmouse0 at ums0 mux 0 uhid0 at uhidev1 reportid 2: input=1, output=0, feature=0 uhid1 at uhidev1 reportid 3: input=2, output=0, feature=0 uhub10 at uhub8 port 2 "Terminus Technology USB 2.0 Hub" rev 2.00/1.11 addr 6 uhub11 at uhub8 port 3 "Terminus Technology USB 2.0 Hub" rev 2.00/1.11 addr 7 uhidev2 at uhub4 port 2 configuration 1 interface 0 "Winbond Electronics Corp Hermon USB hidmouse Device" rev 1.10/0.01 addr 2 uhidev2: iclass 3/1 ums1 at uhidev2: 3 buttons, Z dir wsmouse1 at ums1 mux 0 uhidev3 at uhub4 port 2 configuration 1 interface 1 "Winbond Electronics Corp Hermon USB hidmouse Device" rev 1.10/0.01 addr 2 uhidev3: iclass 3/1 ukbd1 at uhidev3: 8 variable keys, 6 key codes wskbd2 at ukbd1 mux 1 wskbd2: connecting to wsdisplay0 vscsi0 at root scsibus3 at vscsi0: 256 targets softraid0 at root scsibus4 at softraid0: 256 targets root on sd0a (91aa77d5c36e292c.a) swap on sd0b dump on sd0b
