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[bigsy]

I found LinITX to be expensive for these boards and have bought several from Varia Store in Germany (https://www.varia-store.com/en/suche/search-apu2e4.html). Even with shipping they're considerably cheaper. Their boards ship with a 2-pin PSU, but an alternative can be easily sourced on Amazon etc (12V 2A 5.5x2.5mm).

[hushcoden]

Varia store in my bookmark, thanks !

Also, can someone please comment on this Mikrotik board: https://mikrotik.com/product/rb450gx4

It's not powerful like the PC-Engine PhilipD mentioned, but it's quite cheaper and I was wondering if it could do a good job with my 80/20 line and possibly with a G.Fast 150/20...

Tia.

[PhilipD]

Hi

That is using RouterOS rather than pfSense. I would suggest visiting their online demo at http://demo.mt.lv/ to see how you feel about it and maybe googling some setup instructions to see what the online resources are like.  The UI looks outdated and may not work well on mobile devices, but otherwise appears to have everything expected of a router.  I'm sure it would cope with 80/20 or even 150/20.

Regards

Phil

[hushcoden]

I agree, RouterOS doesn't look great and I was thinking that after playing a bit with it I could perhaps install OpenWRT as it seems it'd require less resources than pfSense/OPNSense...

[hushcoden]

So, I decided to go with PC-Engines and I bought my kit from the german website suggested by bigsy (I saved 50 quid including shipping)... 

Next step will be to learn about OPNsense (I find its GUI more 'friendly' than the pfSense one), wish me luck ! 

[bigsy]

The APU2's are great boards and I'm sure you'll be pleased. I've found them very reliable.

Some useful resources are at:

https://pcengines.github.io
https://github.com/pcengines/coreboot/issues
https://teklager.se/en/knowledge-base/

Depending on what coreboot bios version your board ships with, you may want to upgrade to a later version. Note that there are problems reported with the latest version (4.11.0.5) so you might want to avoid that.

[hushcoden]

Thanks bigsy and out of curiosity, I believe there is no difference whether I use a mSATA SSD or a SSD, probably the only difference is less power consumption for the mSATA one, right ?

[PhilipD]

Hi hushcoden

I think the PC Engines was the better choice out of the two as it gives you more flexibility to what you install and has a bit more power in reserve.

Regards

Phil

[hushcoden]

Hi PhilipD,

indeed I believe that the right kit to buy 

May I ask you to confirm one thing, please, i.e. I can install OPNsense on both an mSATA or SSD, am I right? Please see picture: why they don't also mention a boot from SSD ?

Sorry if it's a silly question, but I went for the SSD rather than mSATA one and if it's the wrong choice I can still call them and make the change...

Thanks.

[skyeci]

My apu2c4 wont power the ssd from internally  so it either needs an external power source or as I did I made a usb power leas to power the ssd. I even got windows 10 running on it even though not straight forward due to no video.

Opnsense works fine on the mssd. My unit is now a backup in case my qotom goes down.

[PhilipD]

Hi

Hi PhilipD,

indeed I believe that the right kit to buy 

May I ask you to confirm one thing, please, i.e. I can install OPNsense on both an mSATA or SSD, am I right? Please see picture: why they don't also mention a boot from SSD ?

Sorry if it's a silly question, but I went for the SSD rather than mSATA one and if it's the wrong choice I can still call them and make the change...

Thanks.

You can boot from SSD which is SATA, or m-SATA.  For SSD you will need a power adaptor cable to power the SSD. m-SATA is much easier, it just clips on the board.  Also if you are going for their usual case, you will not have room to include a normal SATA drive in the case.

For pfSense and other router OS you can just use an SD memory card, and there is an option in pfSense to just write temporary files to memory so hardly any wear and tear on a memory card.  pfSense loads into memory and runs from there, so having a slow SD memory card doesn't actually affect performance.  Using a memory card means you can use a couple and easily switch between your router OS types as well whilst you try things out.

Regards

Phil

[bigsy]

Sorry if it's a silly question, but I went for the SSD rather than mSATA one and if it's the wrong choice I can still call them and make the change...

Varia offer both the PC Engines cases (as sold by LinITX etc) as well as their own. I guess you must have chosen one of their own cases where the build option includes a SATA drive? As stated by PhilipD a normal SATA drive won't fit in the PC Engines case. 

[hushcoden]

Varia offer both the PC Engines cases (as sold by LinITX etc) as well as their own. I guess you must have chosen one of their own cases where the build option includes a SATA drive? As stated by PhilipD a normal SATA drive won't fit in the PC Engines case.

Oh thanks, that makes sense, how come I didn't realise that straightaway... 

[hushcoden]

Quick update: I'm so pleased about my PC Engines and OPNsense, lots to learn and great satisfaction when I accomplished a new goal 

One thing I can't find info about it: is there a way from the GUI to monitor the CPU (cores) speed ? I'd really understand if and when the CPU goes up to 1.4 GHz...

Tia.

[Chunkers]

Quick update: I'm so pleased about my PC Engines and OPNsense, lots to learn and great satisfaction when I accomplished a new goal 

One thing I can't find info about it: is there a way from the GUI to monitor the CPU (cores) speed ? I'd really understand if and when the CPU goes up to 1.4 GHz...

Tia.

Hi hushcoden,

Great choice of router hardware and software, I always planned to change from pfSense to OPNsense for the same reason you state but have not yet got round to it as my PC Engines router is
so reliable!

My pfSense version used to require a small command line intervention to show the CPU load but since version 2.4 was released now seems to support the CPU monitor natively :



and when I trialled OPNsense briefly in am intel PC it also supported CPU monitoring :



CPU monitoring also appears under the 'System Information' dashboard widget - are you sure its not buried in the dashboard options somewhere?

Regards

C