I have an asrock c2550 board in my pfSense router which just died. Luckily I was able to virtualise it and get the network back up again but I’d like to fix it and have a separate dedicated machine again. The asrock boards are too expensive and seem to be nothing but trouble so I’m looking for something else. I don’t need the sata ports of the asrock board, just two sata ports and a Pci-e slot, also it needs to be mini itx still. So what alternatives are there which are reasonably cheap but not a downgrade for performance?
I have run a 4130t for some time and it can a ton of traffic, if you want ECC would reccomend i3s
Thats your main issue to be honest, not a lot of cheap boards in that category.
Do you have a budget?
I’d rather not spend more than $200. The case is itx otherwise I wouldn’t really care. I have ecc memory but it doesn’t matter so much if I can use it or not.
$154 after 30% off promo
Get like a 4130t or 1220 for cheap used off ebay boom
(Any i3 will allow ECC support)
(your deff gonna pay that premium for itx, full size atx is like $100 right now for same quality)
The Asrock boards are fine from my experience (I had the C2750D4I), the issue is the CPUs dying due to a manufacturing defect that is widely known by now.
There are the C3558 variants of those boards as the successor.
Finding something miniITX < 200$ that’s worth something… idk. It also depends how heavy you’re loading that pfsense. Is there anything else on it?
If you can swing another $50 the Supermicro equivalent might be right up your ally. A1SRI-C2558 is great. I’ve been rocking one in a pFsense box for a few years now. Doesn’t skip a beat.
Socket > SOC
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Don’t think that matters with Intel bringing a new socket every 3 days 
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Still matters used upgrades vs none at all
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wasn’t completely serious either 
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While I can agree to some extent about upgrade-ability, an always on appliance like a pFsense box with an SOC can benefit from power savings. Not to mention that it’s passively cooled (So potentially quieter). Plus, pFsense doesn’t need a whole lot of horsepower to begin with, even for gigabit internet connections. So I maintain that it’s still a good option.
4130t or 1275l are the CPU’s I’m running in my always on stuff and they don’t draw that much more
My pfsesne is connected directly to my 10gbe Nas and esxi box so that’s a lot of packets
I’m looking at a celeron j4005 board as they’re pretty cheap and should perform better than the c2550, I will just need to get ddr4 ram too though.
I don’t really need the features of the asrock board, I’m just looking for something inexpensive and low power.