My next Firewall project

[NeoGen]

So I currently have a little firewall already in place in my home network, but I'm looking to upgrade it to have more network ports while still maintaining the small form factor that I like for appliance kind computing. Not that I need a lot of network ports, but currently I only have 2 ports, one in and one out, and I would like to expand my capabilities to at least 4, in order to have a port dedicated to the internal LAN, a port for connecting to the wireless router and control the wireless part, a port to possibly create a DMZ, and finally the receiving port that will receive the connection straight from my cable modem. And all of this in the smallest form factor possible.
Needless to say that I want it to be AMD based, for the obvious reasons :icon_mrgreen:

When I have these kind of ideas I set out on digital window shopping sprees until I find all the components that fit my requirements and one by one I order them as I can afford until I have all the parts to bring my creation to life. :)

For the case, and because I want it to be as small form factor as possible, I chose the following one, the Mini-box M300 (http://www.mini-box.com/M300-Enclosure-w-Bootable-CF-Reader_2)
http://resources.mini-box.com/online/ENC-M300/moreimages/image1.jpg http://resources.mini-box.com/online/ENC-M300/moreimages/image3.jpg



Now, this case does not include a power supply, and it's so small that nothing standard would fit on it, but gladly they sell some at the website too, so I chose the picoPSU 150XT + 102W Adapter Kit (http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-150-XT-102-power-kit)
http://www.mini-box.com/core/media/media.nl?id=14429&c=ACCT127230&h=ecf955b85449409a1a49 http://resources.mini-box.com/online/PWR-Pico150-XT-102WAC-DC-kit/moreimages/picoPSU-150-XT-102W-Adapter-b2.jpg



I figured 102W of power should be enough to power the following embedded system... The Supermicro H9SKV-420 (https://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/motherboard/embedded/G400/H9SKV-420.cfm) featuring an AMD GX-420CA (http://www.amd.com/Documents/AMDGSeriesSOCProductBrief.pdf) Quad-core x86 APU running at 2GHz with a Max TDP of 25W.
http://images10.newegg.com/productimage/13-182-957-01.jpg



You probably noticed the motherboard only has 2 network ports but I said I wanted 4... if you see the back of the case again it has a PCI card slot to be used with a PCI riser, so I chose the Intel I350-T2 (http://ark.intel.com/products/59062/Intel-Ethernet-Server-Adapter-I350-T2) network card to compliment it with another 2 network ports. This had to be chosen carefully because the motherboard only has 1 PCIe x4 slot.
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/images/product/ethernet-server-adaper-i350-t2.jpg
As much as I hate it the blue team makes really good network cards, compatible with almost anything hardware and software wise out there, so I had to give in and get this piece from team Blue unfortunately... but this was the only one! :)



So now we are down to a few odds and ends, for RAM I picked out a set of 2x8Gb G.Skill Ripjaws F3-1866C10D-16GRSL (http://www.gskill.com/en/product/f3-1866c10d-16grsl), which are overkill but I prefer to have too much than too little.
http://www.gskill.com/imgs/pro/1/1342.jpg



For the PCI card riser I found a generic one on NewEgg, sn AGPtek PCI-e 4X Slot Riser Card Extender Extension Cable
http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/A0U0_130428677286005859c4UiTpYBo9.jpg



And for boot device I will just use a small Verbatim 64GB Store 'n' Go USB3 (http://www.verbatim.com/prod/usb-drives/everyday-usb-drives/store-n-go-mini-metal-usb-drive-sku-49841/) flash pen
http://h30094.www3.hp.com/buynowall_assets/Etilize/Front/1025653573.jpg




I think that covered all the parts need to build it. This setup will run possibly pfSense (https://www.pfsense.org/), or IPFire (http://www.ipfire.org/). I've been running pfSense on my current firewall but I'm not so happy with some things about it so I might try IPFire.
Right now I have all of the above except the motherboard, the Network card and the PCIe riser cable. This project is on hold at the moment though, between Christmas, the wife's birthday and valentines, my finances are strained, so I will resume and possibly have it complete sometime in Spring 2015.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this and if you have any comments or ideas please post about it :)

[Dirk Broer]

The AMD G-Series GX420CA is Jaguar based, since then a new -Puma based- family has been introduced,
with the AMD G-Series GX-424CC being the successor of your chosen APU. Performance wise (http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare_CPUs/AMD_AD5350JAH44HM,AMD_GE420CIAJ44HM,AMD_GE424CIXJ4 4JB/) CPU-World notices hardly any difference though.
I've set them against my chosen AMD low power champion, the -AM1- Athlon 5350. I would need two extra NICs to get to four Ethernet ports, effectively given me five.
But then I would need two PCIe slots and be restricted to the μATX boards that won't fit into my chosen casing, the Antex ISK 110, that has an -external- 90Watt PSU with it.

[NeoGen]

I think I overlooked the AM1 platform because I was specifically looking for motherboards with 2 LAN ports, so in my searches they got filtered out, but thank you for showing it to me Dirk because it just popped up an idea in my mind :)

Even though the AM1 motherboards don't have more than 1 LAN ports, I can see using a 4-port network card instead of 2-port. On the other hand I think what threw me off the 4-port cards was the price, it's 2 or 3 times more expensive.

Passmark has benchmarks with the Athlon 5350 (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2195&cmp[]=2291&cmp[]=2121) and it seems to beat the other 2, especially the one I was thinking, the GX-420CA. The newer one, GX-424CC appears to have higher clock frequency (which gives a higher score on single thread test) but still falls slightly below the Athlon 5350 in overall. The good thing is they are both under 25W TDP.

Good thing I left the motherboard, CPU and network card for last on my shopping list, this way I still have some time to do more research. :icon_mrgreen:


On a side note, my current firewall is running on an R-Series R-464L, which pushes the thermal envelope up to 35W but gives a nice boost in performance (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2195&cmp[]=1438). For a simple home firewall this is way too much power, especially graphics wise. Once I have the new firewall in place I want to turn this R-464L into a media center/receiver and hook up the living room TV to it.
The 2nd Generation R-Series appears to have launched already, although only a handful of boards appear to exist yet (http://wwwd.amd.com/catalog/salescat.nsf/processor?openview&restricttocategory=2nd%20Generation%20AMD%20Embedd ed%20R-Series%20Platform). It will still run on the 35W TDP, but the thing that attracts me the most to it is the support for HSA (http://www.amd.com/Documents/2nd_Gen_Rseries_Product_Brief.pdf).

[Dirk Broer]

I don't know how much they charge for the Supermicro board -edit: $199.99 at Newegg (http://www.neweggbusiness.com/product/product.aspx?item=9b-13-182-957)- , but my AM1I-A did not cost me more than 34.99 Euro's (http://www.paradigit.nl/asus-am1i-a-socket-am1-mini-itx/20249035/details.aspx).
It just might be that the money you save on AM1 board and SOC equals the price for this more expensive NIC (http://www.neweggbusiness.com/product/product.aspx?item=9b-33-272-001), :dontknow:

Edit: I just looked up the price for 4-port NICs, :-( at least $440! Looked a bit further, but locally they are still at least 225 Euro's...:shocked:
The IBM 39Y6136 PRO/1000PT Quad however 'just' costs no more than $125.99 at Newegg...