Hardware for Pfsense

Need to migrate from my ISP router to pfsense (or possibly opnsense) as I have a requirement for tagged vlans, any suggestions on what spec hardware best to run it on. I'm looking for a fanless enclosure type mini PC with 4 onboard 2.5 Gbe lan ports and it also needs to be able to comfortably handle up to a 1Gbps fttp connection.

Something like this would probably suit. A quick Google shows people going beyond 1Gbps on 10th/11th generation i3 processors and only having 10% CPU usage.

https://www.mini-itx.com/~N11-1115

In reply to a post by dect:

needs to be able to comfortably handle up to a 1Gbps fttp connection.

Is that a DHCP or PPPoE 1Gbps connection? The old Pentium 4 hardware can cope with routing that speed, but the PPPoE overhead is often the challenge in lower end hardware.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by dect:

needs to be able to comfortably handle up to a 1Gbps fttp connection.

Is that a DHCP or PPPoE 1Gbps connection? The old Pentium 4 hardware can cope with routing that speed, but the PPPoE overhead is often the challenge in lower end hardware.

I need to plan for both eventualities at 1Gbps

Thanks for all the replies guys!!!

In reply to a post by dect:

Thanks for all the replies guys!!!

If you build a pf/OPN sense box, let us know what you find out. At the moment I'm assuming anything like this will draw more power, and given electric prices.

Just on power draws...been running a little stack of four ThinkCentre M720q nodes with Core i5 8th gen processors as my mini-server cluster, virtualised with Proxmox.

Most run steady state around 7 to 10 watts. Typically around 8W. I have one machine in the cluster that has 4 x 1 GbE on a mini PCIe card that doesn't seems to draw appreciably more. Another node has a 2 x 10 GbE NIC and that appears to draw around a 1/3 more power than the others. 10 GbE is power hungry.

There's another 4 node cluster coming using newer M80q Gen 3 nodes with 12th Gen i5-12500T vPRO proc's so will be interesting to see how they compare to the older boxes.

From what I have read in the past, the Dell Wyse 5070 is a good choice for pfsense, you can pick them up on eBay., They have a external slot to put another ethernet card in. Pfsense is not very good with Wi-fi so I have read, so you still need to connect some sort of wi-fi extender to it.

I was looking at the hardware using around the 10w mark but having looked the faster the gen of processor the more power it typically uses so its a balancing act to get the best throughput I want without over cooking it on the power.

I was considering Proxmox for visualisation but have read about issues with newer 2.5Gbe ports.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

From what I have read in the past, the Dell Wyse 5070 is a good choice for pfsense

I don't believe the onboard adapter is 2.5Gbe, also I believe the processor could be a limiting factor on throughput.