Silent PC for FreeBSD? Low power consumption, low price

Hello,

I would like to buy a PC that is fully compatible with FreeBSD. I want to use Intel Graphics Drivers to avoid driver trouble. The system needs to be very silent - it would be great if it had no fans at all.
I do not have very much knowledge of current hardware and do not know how to manually put everything together.
If there is a barebone with everything you need except for the HDD, it would be optimal for me.

I would like to avoid problems like overheating and unusual high power consumption caused by insufficient FreeBSD compatibility.

I am fine with mini PCs. It would be great if there is space for an SSD and a 3,5" HDD.

I love low power consumption and low prices. Maybe like 300 US dollars at most. More if it is worth it.
Can you recommend a PC?

PS: I am not a native speaker, I hope you understand what I say :)
 
iI'm also searching for a low TDP solution. iI found a nice Zotac.

Really nice models are listed here: http://geizhals.at/?cat=barepc&asuch=zotac&bl1_id=30&sort=p&xf=3345_2015#xf_top All are released in 2015

So iI don't have to build it by myself and there is a low power power supply included. Much more energy efficient than a 300W+ Gold/Platinum power supply

Hopefully the Intel Celeron N3150 is supported by VMware vSphere Hypervisor, then iI'll want to run a OPNsense Firewall and a FreeBSD box.
 
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Hopefully the Intel Celeron N3150 is supported by VMware vSphere Hypervisor, then iI'll want to run a OPNsense Firewall and a FreeBSD box.
Expensive bit of software to run on low cost, low power hardware. According to the Intel site it supports VT-x and VT-x with EPT. I think that should be enough for bhyve :D
 
Expensive bit of software to run on low cost, low power hardware. According to the Intel site it supports VT-x and VT-x with EPT. I think that should be enough for bhyve :D
hmm, iI don't get it. why is a free software expensive? :D

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/
VMware vSphere Hypervisor is a free bare-metal hypervisor that virtualizes servers so you can consolidate your applications on less hardware.

and this low cost/power box is the best solution for a firewall and a little webserver in my opinion :)


kr,
sebastian
 
Things may have changed but I always though it was ESXi (the actual hypervisor) that was free. vSphere is the software that can manage one or more ESXi hosts. But they may have shuffled those names around.

I've managed quite large vCenter/vCloud setups but I never had to buy the stuff, all licenses where already there.
 
Expensive bit of software to run on low cost, low power hardware. According to the Intel site it supports VT-x and VT-x with EPT. I think that should be enough for bhyve :D
FWIW, I have the less expensive model, the ASRock BeeBox N3000, and I plan to learn about bhyve on it. So far, the vmm.ko module loads fine.
 
I don't want to jack this thread but the byhve buzz is interesting.
According to the Intel site it supports VT-x and VT-x with EPT
Thanks for this. I was wondering how they were able to run VM on a chip without VT-d.

So how good is the hardware passthrough support?

Another interesting device for low power box is the Chromebox. I don't know if FreeBSD runs on them but they can run Linux.
 
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