# Is Asus H170 pro ok for FreeBSD?



## Emrion (Feb 27, 2019)

Hello,

I'm planning to buy a PC based on this motherboard: https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/H170I-PRO/overview/

As far as I can see, it includes two wired network cards and a wifi one.
At this point, I'm unable to find out the chipsets involved in these hardwares and so unable to know if there are FreeBSD drivers that work for these.

Just saw that the sata controler of Intel H170 chipset run under FreeBSD 11.

Before to buy, I would like to be a little confident about the good functionning of the network cards (including wifi).

Anyone has any information?


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## SirDice (Feb 27, 2019)

Emrion said:


> At this point, I'm unable to find out the chipsets involved in these hardwares and so unable to know if there are FreeBSD drivers that work for these.


Look at the specs.


> Intel® I219V, 1 x Gigabit LAN Controller(s)
> Realtek®, 1 x Gigabit LAN


The Intel card is probably fine (most Intel cards work). The Realtek might be a hit or miss, a lot of Realtek cards are supported by if_re(4) but Realtek seems to have a habit of changing their designs without changing the chip's ID.


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## Emrion (Feb 27, 2019)

Thank you *SirDice*. Ok, concerning the Realtek card, it's a matter of chance. But the case seems rather positive.

I totally missed the chipset for the Intel one but Realtek is a brand, not a chipset. Remains the wifi card...


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## olli@ (Feb 27, 2019)

The Realtek LAN NIC is an RTL8111H. It should work fine with FreeBSD's re(4) driver.
The Wifi chip is a Qualcomm Atheros QCNFA364A / QCA6174. I have no idea if it works with FreeBSD, but I'm afraid it's unlikely. If you need Wifi connectivity, consider buying a supported USB Wifi adapter.


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## shkhln (Feb 27, 2019)

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/H170I-PRO/overview/:


> Fan Xpert 2+ advanced fan controls for ultimate cooling and silent performance



Presumably not under FreeBSD.


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## Emrion (Feb 27, 2019)

Thanks. The wifi chip make me to reconsider my buying. Worse, there is Bluthooth feature on the same die...

Well, concerning the fan control, the PC in question shouldn't have one at all, as it's a zero decibel labelled machine.


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## shepper (Feb 27, 2019)

olli@ said:


> The Realtek LAN NIC is an RTL8111H.


This card will work out of the box at 10/100.  10/100/1000 requires firmware and I believe the forum has prior threads on what is involved.
Thread 67004


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## olli@ (Feb 28, 2019)

shepper said:


> This card will work out of the box at 10/100.  10/100/1000 requires firmware and I believe the forum has prior threads on what is involved.Thread 67004



No, it doesn't require anything. It works out of the box, period, including 1000baseT. I have access to several machines with such Realtek NICs; there are no problems whatsoever, and you don't have to do anything special.

Of course, you should make sure that you …

… have good cables (if in doubt, swap cables or buy new ones).
… use a recent and supported version of FreeBSD. At this time I recommend stable/12 or 12-RELEASE.
… do _not_ disable autonegotiation at either end. Problems often arise when people try to manually set the media at one end.


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## olli@ (Feb 28, 2019)

shkhln said:


> https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/H170I-PRO/overview/:
> 
> 
> > Fan Xpert 2+ advanced fan controls for ultimate cooling and silent performance
> ...


It's not a problem with FreeBSD.
I have a different Asus mainboard, but with the same fan control stuff. You can configure it in the UEFI BIOS setup. There's no driver required for FreeBSD.


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## Emrion (Mar 2, 2019)

olli@ said:


> If you need Wifi connectivity, consider buying a supported USB Wifi adapter.


I need more than wifi connectivity. My concern is: which  access point USB wifi dongle works with FreeBSD? And is it possible to passthru such a device into bhyve?


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## 11e9b60a (Apr 21, 2019)

I know for a fact that, in Linux at least, such I219V(2) had trouble with 1Gbps speed. Could be driver or power management issue. However it worked fine at 100Mbps


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## Emrion (Apr 21, 2019)

Luckily, my wired network is at 100 Mbps.
The machine has been bought and is in "production" since one day: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/a-freebsd-box-for-home.70451/


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