Aye, the hard drive is for some of the pfsense packages. Does not use much power (~1.3 watts at idle), but other than fans it is the most likely point of failure. Ya, the 3 NICs are for as you described with the PCI/PCIe for future wireless as necessary. I am ignorant on the OpenBSD support, but the...

My goal was to make a small, low power firewall that would be relatively future proof. I wanted to run pfsense. "future proof: in this sense means some expandability, preferably PCI and PCIe, and a min of 2 gigabit interfaces with enough CPU grunt to push gig speeds (3 wired interfaces total needed)...

I'm biding my time. As my application is a replacement for a P60(!) running smoothwall as a firewall, switching to pfsense, and it's more of a "nice to have" than "need to have", I'm in no hurry. My main goals are low power, small size (I have a mini rack I want it to fit into), PCIe expansion, Inte...

Yeah, I've looked at the Kontron; unfortunately (and rightly or wrongly) the realtek NICs scare me off. Too many horror stories, though at least these are PCIe NICs.

Good CPU for a *nix based box. Since it's not x86 it won't run Windows.

I see these being used in proprietary firewall/router boxes. No idea if there will ever be a motherboard we can plug one into. Perhaps something pre-soldered like an EPIA.

I'm glad to see it appears to be widely available in Germany. If you run across any information on a non-english website/forum or buy one yourself, I (and I suspect many others here) would appreciate you repeating anything you find. I'm particularly interested in power consumption numbers. This and ...

jojo4u, is the board readily available in Germany? MSI says it will not be available in the US for a few months yet (late Q2). I tried to dig around MSI's German website, but I cannot locate it which implies it is not yet supported either.

I'm eyeballing it for a firewall system running pfsense.

I've been looking for this motherboard off and on for a few months (looking to build a pfsense forewall). I was only seeing it at retailers in Europe (and given the language issues I'm not sure if it's actually in stock). The only mention on an MSI website is http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/i...

Look at the new line from VIA. Look for one with an Eden processor -- that's what they call anything that runs fanless. This can make it confusing to figure out what core the CPU actually has. Fileserving takes very little CPU power, "number crunching" is exactly the opposite. You'll need to be more...

I've no idea on the chipset driver and expansion slots thing -- always good to have a chipset that "the community" agrees is well supported, which (I think) generally just means has been around for a bit (not bleeding edge) and is popular enough for there to be demand. As I do not recall seeing chip...

If you're doing number crunching where errors in computation matter, I'd assume you're: 1) not overclocking 2) using ECC RAM. If the code has regulatory issues attached to it, I hope the above is the case (I work in the medical device field so I have some regulatory experience). So, that said, can y...

Poodle, First, I want to make sure I'm not accidentally "talking" you into getting something yo do not need. I do not want this to be the firewall equivalent of recommending a 1000W power supply to someone with integrated video :D Second, I'm very jealous of your WAN speed! From a bandwidth standpoi...

Are you saying that the firewall must have PCI-e? Will not normal Pci GB lan cards be enough for the Internet sharing? For your internet connection (WAN), a 10/100 will be plenty*. If the only thing the LAN side of the firewall is connected to is your main rig, then a 10/100 will be fine for that t...

You must be in a hurry! I feel obliged to mention that it is not a good security practice to have your firewall doing anything but firewalling (i.e. it should not be a server too). Of course it's your network so it is your choice. </soapbox> Before I can look for a mobo for you, how many ethernet in...

The problem with a fuel tax in the US is that public transport is almost non-existent; so by raising the price of fuel you are making it more costly for poor people to travel to work etc, while rich people won't even notice and will keep driving SUV's etc. It's a regressive tax. What you need is so...

In general: people behave according to the incentive systems in place. You see this at work all the time, people will behave to drive a given metric in the "right" direction, even if it may lead to a less optimal overall result for the company, department, etc. This is why it is critical to have goo...

Smilingcrow, I want to thank you for your efforts in this area. I am figuring out what hardware to use as a pfsense firewall and am currently leaning in the direction of a S479 solution. For my application CPU power is not critical (though I need about P3-800 at a minimum), so with a Celeron M, if i...

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tomcati945gm.html 2 PCI-e GigE, 1 10/100, supports mobile and C2D CPUs. Appears to be brand new -- no manual and limited references on the web. I've been searching for a low power board to run pfsense on and mount in a short rack; this seems perfect as both NIC chi...