my router is a Lenovo m920q tiny
With which CPU? How much does it consumes?
Comment on good alternatives to raspberry pi which are cheap and efficient?
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Go on eBay and look for “tiny” or USFF boxes. Dell, HP, and Lenovo make various models of 1L units that are commonly available. Just make sure to do some research on what the specific hardware capabilities are to make sure they satisfy your needs.
Source: my router is a Lenovo m920q with an eBay dual SFP+ 10G NIC running pfSense 2.7.
peregus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
i5 8500T. I don’t recall exactly what the power draw is, but iirc it’s in the 20-30w range - admittedly a bit high, but that’s likely due to the old LSI nic in there which is technically an enterprise-grade card, and not terribly power efficient. Nonetheless, works great, full 10G speed, no thermal issues in the last few months I’ve been running it (in the summer, so I should be totally fine in the winter).
dan@upvote.au 1 year ago
my router is a Lenovo m920q tiny with an eBay dual SFP+ 10G NIC running pfSense 2.7.
Can you get 10Gbps NAT throughput through it? That’s the main reason I’m not running my own pfSense/opnSense router.
I’ve currently got a TP-Link ER8411 which was affordable ($350) and can reach 10Gbps, but it doesn’t have an IPv6 firewall (what???) so I can’t actually enable IPv6.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
So the big gain you’ll likely see is bang/capability for the money. If you’re careful and wait for a deal, can usually find 1L boxes for like $50-75. Get a cheap m2 ssd (and back up your confs regularly if you’re not running raid z2). The nic is going to be anywhere from about 30-70, but you’ll need to do your research on exactly what capabilities the thing you’re buying has (for example: I had a false start initially, because the RJ45 10G nic I found couldn’t negotiate at 2.5G (what I’m running now), and it’s actually pretty hard to find a 2.5G enterprise nic. Make sure the nic is intel, too - none of that Realtek crap, which is less performant and often has stupid driver crap you have to deal with under Linux and BSD (pfSense). You may want to spend a few extra bucks and get the Lenovo external pcie mount plate/bracket for aesthetics/“don’t stick your fingies in here”, and you will need an adapter for Lenovo’s proprietary PCIe-but-not-a-standard-PCIe-port thing.
dan@upvote.au 1 year ago
If you’re careful and wait for a deal, can usually find 1L boxes for like $50-75
I’ve actually got a spare HP ProDesk SFF PC with an Intel Core i5-9500. Would that CPU be sufficient?
Make sure the nic is intel, too - none of that Realtek crap
I’ve also got a spare 10Gbps Trendnet NIC which uses an Aquantia AQC107 chip. Are Aquantia OK for this purpose?
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Yeah, though the advantage of the T sku CPUs is that they have ultra low tdp. Great for 24/7 boxes.
zampson@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Yeah Lenovo tinies ares great I have a bunch of m910q’s I use for everything
lettruthout@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Will second this idea. I’ve had good luck running low-use Samba servers on a Lenovo tiny model.
seaQueue@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thin clients are also solidly good as container hosts. I’ve used HP T630s and Wyse 5070s in place of RPis during the great pi shortage with good results.
ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
I’ve had good luck running more intensive loads on more recent models of these systems, say 3 to 5 gens old … multiple desktop OSes running concurrently on Proxmox, etc. The “1 liter” class of PCs is really quite capable these days!