On 09/04/18 00:57, Joel Wirāmu Pauling wrote: > But - The thing that isn't mentioned here is basically Power Cost and > Consumption vs PPS(Packet Processing Speed). > > IMNSHO running on anything that doesn't ; > > A) Have passive Cooling > B) Is older than a couple of years (in intel/amd terms anything with a > TDPW above 65W) > > - is probably not a great idea. Mainly because the on-going cost of > supplying power to old junkers isn't worth what you can do with a > 'newish' junker. > > If you have free electricity, feel free to do what you like I guess.
TDP is the MAXIMUM power draw. MAXIMUM (and of only the CPU) Your OpenBSD firewall isn't going to be running at the maximum power consumption on a P4 or newer processor very often or very long. For home use, you really care about idle power draw and the ability of the HW to do the job. Every era has its "The Answer Is" system, this year, it's PCengines and ARM/Octeon. Before, it was Soekris. People get stupid with that stuff. What's "greener", keeping something out of a landfill that draws 40w or something brand new that draws 15W? How many years do you have to run the 15W system to pay for the cost of it? How much is your time spent fighting with its quirks worth? Will it pay off before your ISP ups your downlink speed to the point where your barely-does-the-job HW is now "can't do the job"? Some old P3/P4 systems have very modest power consumptions when idle. Get yourself a wattmeter, and see what you have. After install, remove power from the CD/DVD, maybe some of the case fans, and maybe consider a USB flash drive to boot. Slow the clock speed, remove some RAM. Pull out the sound card/modem/whatever. And when things break, unless you just HAPPEN to have a serial terminal infrastructure laying around, an ol' keyboard and monitor used to debug your system will beat the heck out of finding a USB to Serial adapter and a null modem cable when you need it. Heck, I have a serial infrastructure in my life, and I'm really wondering if my serial-only firewall is worth the pain. I recently moved from a USB drive to a real hard disk because while it draws more power, it boots and works a LOT faster (kernel and library randomization is horrible on USB flash drives). I get the "I hate Intel" thing, but unfortunately, most of the non-Intel systems show why Intel (and AMD) own the serious computer market. Nick.
