fanless FreeBSD workstation/router

patpro

patpro

Hello,

I’m in the (never ending) process of looking for a good/reliable fanless PC to act as
- internet gateway / firewall / web server…
- bhyve / jail host
- occasional workstation

I’ve seen some nice boxes:
- ZBOX nano (Zotac)
- ASUS NUC 13 Rugged
- Vault Pro VP4600 Series (protectli)

Have you some experience with those brands / model?
Are those durable?
My current fanless PC seems immortal: bought in 2013 and still running super great, but it lacks few CPU cores to handle the evolution of my usage.


(edit)
target is:
- 16 to 32GB RAM
- at least 2 storage "slots"
- virtualization support with pass-through
- at least 2 Eth ports (2.5GB is a bonus)
 
I recently had to replace my heavy-duty graphics Windows machine, after it got taken out by a nearby lighting strike (in spite of being on a UPS), and while I was waiting for it to arrive, I set up a FreeBSD desktop on an MSI Cubi 5 (https://www.newegg.com/msi-cubi-5-1...ations/p/N82E16883151383?Item=N82E16883151383), with an Intel Core i3-1215u, 8 GB ram, and 1 TB SSD. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that about 90% of my day to day stuff can be done on the little fanless box. It has two Ethernet connections, four USB-A, and one USB-C. Something like that might work if you do not have many subnets to deal with. (Of course, if you connected to a smart enough Ethernet switch, you could use VLAN tagging, and have the switch break them out.)

Another approach would be something like the DECISO DEC677 or DEC697 (https://shop.opnsense.com/new-dec600-series-opnsense-desktop-security-appliances/). It is designed for firewall/router use, and runs OPNsense, which is built on top of FreeBSD. (They say that if you uninstall the OPNsense package, you have a vanilla FreeBSD system.) These boxes have four Ethernet ports, but they have only one USB-A connection, so you might have to add a USB hub. I am using a DEC675 (the predecessor to the DEC677) for my router, and it has been very reliable, and also quiet, since it is fanless.

I have no knowledge of the boxes you listed, but I wanted to suggest a couple that I have been happy with. Good luck!
 
Thank you both.
- MSI Cubi could do the trick
- OPNsense appliances are cute as hell, but are inadequate (not enough RAM/Storage, no video output…)
- MLLSE M2 Mini PC is unfit for the routing/firewall/gateway part, only 1 Eth
 
patpro said:
Vault Pro VP4600 Series (protectli)
Click to expand...
Not the VP4600 but I've had a number of Protectli machines over the last few years and they've all been very robust.

There are definitely cheaper clones that may as good (and possibly from the same factory etc.) but no complaints about the Protectli machines I've had so far.

Mostly used OpenBSD on them, but I do have one machine (VP2410) that I use to test FreeBSD upgrades.

I've not pushed any of them in terms of networking or performance, but a few of them have been 24x7, headless, and all good.
 
HP ProDesk units are nice, if you can get them secondhand or for a good price. I have this one https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06955645
which is single ethernet, but dual ethernet units exists as well, for example
www.servethehome.com

HP ProDesk 405 G4 Mini Dual Internal 1GbE NICs with a Catch

We take a look at the HP ProDesk 405 G4 Mini with a special twist. We added a second NIC to this AMD Ryzen platform, a highly requested topic
www.servethehome.com www.servethehome.com
just be aware, not all of these are fanless, but they are quiet.
 
patpro said:
Hello,

I’m in the (never ending) process of looking for a good/reliable fanless PC to act as
- internet gateway / firewall / web server…
- bhyve / jail host
- occasional workstation

I’ve seen some nice boxes:
- ZBOX nano (Zotac)
- ASUS NUC 13 Rugged
- Vault Pro VP4600 Series (protectli)

Have you some experience with those brands / model?
Are those durable?
My current fanless PC seems immortal: bought in 2013 and still running super great, but it lacks few CPU cores to handle the evolution of my usage.


(edit)
target is:
- 16 to 32GB RAM
- at least 2 storage "slots"
- virtualization support with pass-through
- at least 2 Eth ports (2.5GB is a bonus)
Click to expand...
I don't know if you would be interested in the kind of system I use but it's a fairly powerful fanless system I use as my daily driver.
It's a 12-core AMD Ryzen CPU-based system that has integrated AMD Radeon graphics - this means you have an extra 16 PCIe lanes not being used by a graphics card which allows you to install more cards etc.

There appear to be two approaches to fanless systems that I've seen:
1. small devices that effectively use the case as a big heatsink
2. larger cases (Mini-ITX / ATX etc) that are larger and use a massive CPU heatsink.

My system uses a larger case with a massive heatsink. I have a fan installed but it is not connected yet, as I have never needed it so far, but that may change once I start doing long compiles etc.

Specs:
Asus PRIME mini-ITX case
MSI PRO B650M A-WIFI motherboard (although only one 2.5Gb NIC provided)
AMD Ryzen 9 7900 12-core CPU with integrated GPU (12 core, 24 threads) ~65W TDP / ~88W PPT
32GB Corsair Vengeance memory
Noctua NH-P1 CPU heatsink (fanless)
Seasonic 500W fanless PSU

All NVMe SSDs have heatsinks attached but no fans and seem to run cool enough.

I run a 3-way mirror NVMe M.2 SSD ZFS pool on this on a 4-slot NVMe M.2 SSD expansion card which uses the x16 PCIe slot and converts into four x4 NVMe slots via bifurcation in the BIOS.

I have also installed a 2-way SSD ZFS mirror as a handy internal backup target (other external backups too).

Plus I have 2 NVMe M.2 SSDs as boot drives for (1) FreeBSD and (2) Linux.

In total the system contains 5 NVMe M.2 SSDs and 2 standard SSDs. No spinning rust included.

At idle, with this hardware, it pulls between 30W and 40W at the socket, verified by the Kill-a-Watt style plug device. Of course, this increases once you do something.
Idle temps are about 45C.

All in all, I am delighted with how this system performs: 100% silent as there are zero fans in the case, super fast CPU when required, yet just sips power when it is idle and runs cool. Plus I have the power of ZFS for data integrity.
 
Another one that seems kind of nice is the Neosmay: https://www.newegg.com/p/2X4-003W-00023?Item=9SIBDYFK7Y8246

I have one of these, but I haven't pushed it very hard: it monitors a UPS in the back room using nut. (It would have probably been better to buy network-aware UPS, but I didn't.)

BTW, A word of warning: with the MSI CUBI, the installer may hang after complaining about the UART. You need to go into the loader menu and add these hints:

hint.uart.0.disabled="1"
hint.uart.1.disabled="1"

And you also need to add them to /boot/loader.conf.local.

Apparently the computer tells FreeBSD that it has a valid UART, but it lies.
 
While we are talking about fanless boxes, has anyone run into a good fanless computer with a PCIe slot? I was all set to buy a USB IRIG timecode reader to use with my MSI CUBI when I found out that the vendor’s driver for FreeBSD only supports the PCIe version. I am seeing some industrial fanless computers with PCIe slots in the $1000+ range. I may be dreaming, but I would really like to find something for less than $500.
 
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