Which CPU <-> 70-80Mbit

[Phil2002 1]

Ive googled and searched, but didnt find a useful answer to this. My isp gives me about 70-80Mbit d/l speed, and im thinking

about buying a barebone pc for the de/encryption, but im not sure what cpu power is needed to reach that speed.

 

Any suggestions?

[Phil2002 1]

Some better search terms lead me to more results. It seems for the speeds i want to achieve, a modern intel atom cpu is needed. Barebones with such a cpu and 2xgb lan cost around € 400,-. Which again

is too much for my taste atm. So ill stick to the client for now.

[SlyFox 10]

Yea, I was looking into building a pfense system but decided to wait until my ISP can be upgraded maybe next year right now I'm capped at 35 down, 5 up. I found a cheaper alternative buying the asus ac56u router and its 800 dual cpu allows my entire home network to reach my max isp speed through tomato vpn client. I didnt even have to overclock.

 

The ac56u can be easily overclocked to 1200mhz which im guessing you could get around 50mbps. $98 on Amazon.

[Phil2002 1]

Which wouldnt be too bad... i could buy the Nighthawk r7000, but ive read its overclocked max at about 45Mbits. So im not sure about the 50Mbits with a 800Mhz router.

[SlyFox 10]

Yea you would need to overclock the ac56u another 400mhz. I looked into the r7000 which has slightly better hardware. I settled on ac56u because of price and also a ping issue a lot of r7000 tomato users report and I do game a lot. Tomato should still be considered in beta phase with ARM routers like the ac56u and r7000 but it's getting better with each new release. Currently using Shibby its been stable for me.

 

I don't know if you are in th USA or not but Amazon has a wonderful return policy. So you can give it a few weeks to see if it meets your needs.

[mlp 10]

Some better search terms lead me to more results. It seems for the speeds i want to achieve, a modern intel atom cpu is needed. Barebones with such a cpu and 2xgb lan cost around € 400,-. Which again

is too much for my taste atm. So ill stick to the client for now.

 

Going the pfsense route is what I have done.  Agree that one of the atoms is a reasonable approach if looking long term at energy costs.  However, has a higher upfront cost.  Found an older computer (core 2 duo) that someone isn't using anymore and added a cheap intel dual NIC (can find them on ebay for ~$35-50) and a flash drive to hold pfsense.  Can work on undervolting (if motherboard allows) or other energy saving techniques to get energy consumption down somewhat.  You won't be able to get to atom levels, but close.  Easily maxes 100.

  

Alternately, many descriptions of old laptops (especially thinkpads) being used (benefit of mobile processors with lower TDP, built in UPS), but downside of more expensive NICs.

 

Decided to use this approach as opposed to buying one of the newer routers with the beefy CPU.  I don't have/need AC coverage.  Ended up as a lower cost for me, and ultimately does more than the standalone router.  Plus, I got to learn pfsense.

 

Good luck and have fun.

[dssguy11 4]

this is the route i went as well.. I took everything out of the PC that wasn't needed and went into the bios and disabled everything not needed.  With AirVPN, i get about 95 percent of my ISP speed.  Used a kill-a-watt and PC is using under 30 watts, only cost me a couple bucks a month in electricity costs and works great.

[rickjames 106]

Some motherboards will boot w/o errors with no gfx card in them as well. So if the pfsense pc doesn't have onboard video you may be able to power the machine off, yank out the video card and boot it up fully headless. -saves some watts.

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​I had a gigabyte UD3P 775 mobo with a core2 1.8Ghz in it for a bit running pfsense. It ran fully headless great and with the PowerD option in pfsense set to minimum the cpu ran at 150Mhz 99% of the time. It ran so cool I ended up pulling out all the fans as well.