# pcengines replacement



## rootbert (Monday at 5:27 PM)

I am looking for a replacement for my pcengines apu2 ... while it is an almost perfect fit for my needs, I need a somewhat faster device. Faster in the sense of I/O. I use it as firewall and storage system (via sshfs) - with 2 USB enclosures with 4x12TB HDD each. Accessing the USB disks is at about ~ 15-25MB/sec (compared to my AMD Ryzen system with ~ 150MB/sec) ... ~ 50MB/sec should be enough.

My requirements are:

fanless
ECC memory
CPU with AES
low power consumption (< 8W idle, <20W on average usage)
2 ethernet interfaces, 3 would be ideal
at least 2 USB 3.0 ports, 3 would be ideal
smallish in size

any suggestions?


----------



## jbo (Monday at 8:10 PM)

Doesn't fit you requirements precisely but as nobody else chimed in so far: At home I run an HP MicroServer Gen10+.
I have no complains with it so far (running it for three or four years now).

While it isn't fan-less it's extremely quiet. Unless I am pushing it the fan never reaches an audible level. In any cases, the disks are much more noisy than the one fan it contains.

Not sure if there are different versions but mine has 4x 1 Gbps Ethernet and 4x USB 3.x.


----------



## diizzy (Monday at 8:12 PM)

Unless you're going for used hardware (beware of hardware vulnerabilities) that's going to be relatively hard to find right now especially if you're looking for a low power device.
I think your best bet for now is a HPE MicroServer Gen10+ but its not in the same ballpark pricewise as your APU2 and not fanless.
https://www.servethehome.com/hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10-plus-review-this-is-super/6/ regarding power consumption

There are some nice ARM-based systems available but they don't tick all your boxes


----------



## covacat (Monday at 8:22 PM)

https://www.amazon.com/HISTTON-Windows-Industrial-2xUSB3-0-Computer/dp/B09PDPC6J4
		

there are enough of those on aliexpress
around $250
there are also version with 4 and 6 ethernet ports


----------



## rootbert (Monday at 10:02 PM)

thanks for the replies so far. All the nice boxes on various platforms like aliexpress such as HISTTON or qotom do not state anything about ECC memory. I might look into used thin clients with ECC or smaller Intel Atom systems


----------



## Phishfry (Monday at 11:11 PM)

rootbert said:


> ECC memory


This one is going to be hard to replicate in another tiny platform.
ECC in a network embedded box was bold move.


----------



## Phishfry (Monday at 11:23 PM)

SuperMicro is making some nice embedded boards these days.
Unfortunately they don't support ECC.


			A2SAN-E | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro
		

Same with their E39xx ITX boards.


----------



## Phishfry (Monday at 11:33 PM)

I see support for ECC on Intel Atom C3338/C3558/C3758 Denverton.



			A2SDi-4C-HLN4F | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro
		



			E302-9A | Mini 1U | SuperServers | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.


----------



## richardtoohey2 (Monday at 11:42 PM)

I’m trying one of these:



			E301-9D-8CN4 | Embedded | A+ Servers | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.
		


But not fanless and might be too much $$$s and also 1.5U so not the smallest.

EDIT: not the power profile you want either!









						Supermicro AS-E301-9D-8CN4 Review Embedded EPYC Appliance
					

Our Supermicro AS-E301-9D-8CN4 review shows how this AMD EPYC 3251 platform expands capabilities for embedded edge nodes with more storage




					www.servethehome.com


----------



## bakul (Monday at 11:58 PM)

This may come close: https://mitxpc.com/products/ibox-v1000


----------



## Phishfry (Tuesday at 12:38 AM)

Another SuperMicro Denverton Mini server:


			E200-9A | Mini 1U | SuperServers | Products | Super Micro Computer, Inc.


----------



## Phishfry (Tuesday at 12:48 AM)

I like the Aaeon name. These take ECC.








						FWS-2360 - Network Appliances
					

Desktop Network Appliance with Intel® Atom™ Processor C3000 Series




					www.aaeon.com
				




OEM Version:








						AppNeta M50 Fanless Gigabit OPNsense Firewall Intel Atom Quad Core C3558 AES-NI  | eBay
					

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for AppNeta M50 Fanless Gigabit OPNsense Firewall Intel Atom Quad Core C3558 AES-NI at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!



					www.ebay.com


----------



## diizzy (Tuesday at 7:32 AM)

rootbert
If you're willing to sacrifice your ECC you have lots of options, I would however personally a bit careful about cheap chinese boxes especially since you most likely want bios updates etc for security concerns.


----------



## Crivens (Tuesday at 8:29 AM)

With storage systems, it's not "buy cheap, buy twice". It is "buy cheap, loose everything".
I would avoid these AliExpress things like the plague. Or if you could afford to loose the data they control.


----------



## tuaris (Tuesday at 10:52 AM)

Those Aaeon network appliances look very nice.  One of the rack-mount ones could be a worthy replacement to my aging Sokeris net6501 when the time comes.


----------



## rootbert (Tuesday at 11:00 AM)

yeah I am fine with cheapos doing firewalling stuff where I can just throw in another box and deploy the config, however, I am hesitant with systems where I attach valuable data storage.

Protectli has nice boxes, but no ECC. I would like to buy something from the opnsense shop to support the project, however, they also do not have variants with ecc. Onlogic has some nice boxes, but > 2k € is a bit too much. The Aaeon look nice. And also the kobol with the ECC variant seems to be very attractive: https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/intro/ - according to the wiki the chipset is supported by FreeBSD. Sadly the repositories on github have been idle for quite some time, but a benchmark suggests internally ~ 80MB/sec or via network ~40MB/sec speed - benchmark in german .

Jetway has some nice mainboards, but too expensive. Seems like I am really hitting a niche market, ECC is usually just offered for the upper performance class server/embedded stuff. www.minipc.de is a cool shop though an awkward webinterface should someone stumble upon this thread ...


----------



## diizzy (Tuesday at 2:18 PM)

Helios64 uses the same SoC as RockPro64, it's more or less the same hardware and a JMB585 SATA controller. A rough estimate would be that it's about twice as fast as your APU2 however per core performance is probably about the same.


----------



## Phishfry (Tuesday at 5:22 PM)

Avoid crowdsourced items at all cost. Real companies don't pull the plug.



> Kobol Team is pulling the plug ;(​
> Posted by Kobol Team on August 25, 2021


----------



## Eric A. Borisch (Tuesday at 5:33 PM)

Phishfry said:


> Real companies don't pull the plug.


Laughs in _Google_. (Reader, Orkut, Wave, Google+, …)


----------



## Phishfry (Tuesday at 5:38 PM)

My point is too many crowdfunded products go belly up. Then what. User supported.
PC Engines charged bare basic. I am happy they are still around. It's a hard market.
I wish they had a Ryzen product.


----------



## gpw928 (Tuesday at 10:22 PM)

Crivens said:


> With storage systems, it's not "buy cheap, buy twice". It is "buy cheap, loose everything".
> I would avoid these AliExpress things like the plague. Or if you could afford to loose the data they control.


I think that our basic philosophies are similar, but I suspect my risk management profile may be different.

I don't want to tempt fate too much, but there is nothing in my hardware collection that can't be recovered from backup, so the probability of "lose everything" is actively managed, and extremely low.  But, as you suggest, my "storage systems" are not Chinese origin...

However, at the extremities of my networks I have routers, firewalls, and media clients that generally boot from USB, and can be recovered quickly and easily, often with a simple hardware swap.  This is exactly where these "AliExpress things" seem fit for purpose.

I have had one AliExpress thing for about 6 months, for testing and playing.  I bought it bare-bones, and added branded memory sourced locally, plus a good quality 64G USB3 stick to boot from.  It has no moving parts, and draws less than 10W idle (which is its usual state).  I liked it so much that I just ordered another -- not exactly sure how I will deploy it, but I have a lot of 10+ year old hardware (with lots of noisy power supplies and fans) that's reaching end of plausible life.

I don't know how reliable this Chinese stuff will turn out to be in the long term, but it's not much different to a Raspberry Pi to me.  It's cheap, highly functional, low power, noiseless, readily replaceable, and does the intended job very well.  If it breaks, I drop it in the bin, and spend a bit more on the new hardware.  I'm comfortable with that level of risk.

[Caveat: The integrated Intel graphics chips on these mini-PCs do not yet have main-stream support on FreeBSD.  That will change in due course, but I am using Ubuntu 22.04 desktop LTS because it has a recent Linux kernel which supports the hardware.  For the time being, FreeBSD runs fine in a KVM (and the Pentium N6005 CPU has enough grunt to make that pleasant).  I have not yet tested pfSense or OPNsense on the hardware, but will probably do so when the next box arrives.]


----------



## diizzy (Tuesday at 10:49 PM)

Apart from possibly questionable reliability you rarely see any kind of aftermarket support and that include bios/firmware support which is a huge concern in my book.


----------



## gpw928 (Tuesday at 11:15 PM)

diizzy said:


> Apart from possibly questionable reliability you rarely see any kind of aftermarket support and that include bios/firmware support which is a huge concern in my book.


My AliExpress things have an AMI BIOS, so plausible.  But if I look at all the motherboards I own, or have ever owned, very few have ever had a BIOS upgrade.  So, to me, (lack of) availability of "bios/firmware support" is just a part of the risk equation.

I am most worried about board level components failing prematurely.

However, it all comes down to cost, functionality, reliability and durability.  The reliability and durability are uncertain, but the functionality is high, and the cost is low enough for me to be willing to take a (managed) risk.

I'll let you all know if it turns pear shaped  .


----------



## Phishfry (Tuesday at 11:21 PM)

While Denverton is 6 years old there are still manufacturers producing designs on it.

Some of the mature manufacturers.





						NCA-1515
					

The NCA-1515, a desktop network appliance powered by Intel® Atom® C3000 (codenamed Denverton) CPU, features robust performance and Intel’s QuickAssist Technology, offering cryptographic acceleration and commercial-grade LAN functions in a 231mm x 200mm x 44mm (WxDxH) form factor.




					www.lannerinc.com
				








						DTA 1160 - CPE/vCPE Appliance - Overview - NEXCOM
					

This page describes the Overview of NEXCOM DTA 1160 - CPE/vCPE Appliance. NEXCOM’s desktop appliance DTA1160 countenances inexhaustible possibilities of 5G applications.




					www.nexcom.com
				





			https://www.cas-well.com/products/network-security-management/fanless-desktop-appliance/cad-026b/
		









						PUZZLE-IN003A Desktop Network Appliance
					

PUZZLE-IN003A Desktop Network Appliance with Intel® Atom® Processor C3000 Processor, up to 8 x 1 GbE on Board with 2 (by sku) bypass segments, 1 x eMMC 32GB




					www.ieiworld.com
				




Ryzen is a nice competing platform. I don't have any experiences.
The dual core C3336/C3338 is really low power.


----------



## Jose (Tuesday at 11:50 PM)

gpw928 said:


> I have had one AliExpress thing for about 6 months, for testing and playing...


Any worries with the Intel i226-v in there?





						r/hardware - The new Intel i226-V / i226-LM / i226-IT NICs
					

119 votes and 77 comments so far on Reddit




					www.reddit.com


----------



## gpw928 (Wednesday at 12:49 AM)

Jose said:


> Any worries with the Intel i226-v in there?


My original box uses the I225-V (rev 03) chips.  There were several iterations of changes to Linux drivers for the I225 (and I detected a lot of problems and confusion when researching on-line).  Mine appear to work well with Ubuntu 22.04, which was chosen precisely (over my usual choice of Debian) because it had Linux kernel (5.15) that post-dated most of the igc driver issues I could find (and supported the newest integrated Intel graphics).

But I'm limited to 1 Gbit switch ports.  benchmarks/iperf3 sustains about 950 Mbits/sec in both client and server mode.  I have not experienced any Ethernet issues over several months.

I don't yet have experience with the I226-V chips on the newer models.  My gut is that they will be an improvement on I225-V.

I do not yet have any 2.5 Gbit switches to test with.  So I just don't know if I will see problems there.  I want to move to 2.5 Gbit hosts on the periphery and 10 Gbit trunks, but nothing demands that right now.

[I wish I could say more about FreeBSD on these systems, and I will test as soon as the video drivers catch up.]


----------



## Phishfry (Wednesday at 1:51 AM)

https://www.cas-well.com/products/network-security-management/fanless-desktop-appliance/caf-0262/
		









						Caswell CAF-0262 Intel Atom-NS Platform SD-WAN vCPE Security Desktop Solution  | eBay
					

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Caswell CAF-0262 Intel Atom-NS Platform SD-WAN vCPE Security Desktop Solution at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!



					www.ebay.com


----------



## Phishfry (Wednesday at 5:20 PM)

rootbert said:


> . I use it as firewall and storage system (via sshfs) - with 2 USB enclosures with 4x12TB HDD each. Accessing the USB disks is at about ~ 15-25MB/sec


Well the APU2 only has one USB3 connector so I bet you are running into the max USB2 transfer rate.

What if you piped both enclosures to a usb3 hub and single line to USB3 jack? I would test that setup.









						NA362
					

Desktop Network Appliance Platform with Intel® Atom® Processor C3338/C3558/C3758 and up to 10 LAN for VPN, Network Bandwidth Controller, Firewall and UTM



					us.axiomtek.com


----------



## msplsh (Wednesday at 9:32 PM)

rootbert said:


> Protectli has nice boxes


A lot of weird mSATA and B-keyed M.2 products in here as well as from the other vendors.  That's the one thing I wish PCEngines would update.  Good mSATA drives don't seem to exist anymore.

I don't understand the eMMC on the NVMe boxes, but they're also double what I would expect.  Looks like you need a 2017+ product to get NVMe.


----------

