hey everyone, I want to build my own router and install Pfsense, but I’m not sure what components to get.
Can anyone help me please? My requirements are not power hungry, not too much noise, Intel NIC, support for 1000 mb/s up and down, and I want components to accommodate most of Pfsense’s features without any issues.
Thx 
well the two things that i would consider is intel for the ethernet and make sure the processor has aes-ni feature so that pfsense 2.5 and up will work with it. i bought a Qotom-Q330G4 Fanless Mini PC with 4G RAM 32G SSD,Processor Core i3 4005U off of amazon and have configured ipvanish and snort to run on it. have fun!
my pfsense box consists of a g4400t and a asrock minitix server board w/ dual nics, in a 2U case .with a seasonic gold power supply i had laying around.
it works well for me.
The mini-pc looks nice and cheap, but it appears to run very hot according to reviews
Isn’t a $200 motherboard for G4400T too pricy? 
While I don’t have a pfSense box running yet I did order components to build one just last night after doing research as well as asking on here.
I’m currently on 300/60 Mbit/s with the option to upgrade to 1 Gbit/s.
This is what I ended up with:
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1265 v3
…because it has all the power I need for this purpose (4x2.5 GHz with HT) and it’s only 45W TDP making it cheap to run. Got it used off of ebay. Seems to be one of the best CPUs around when power consumption vs. performance is of a high priority.
It also ensures it can run really silent - have yet to figure out which cooler to get.
RAM: Kingston Server Premier 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ECC
…because, uhm, 8 GB ought to be plenty. I guess any stick will do, got this cause it was cheap.
Mobo: ASUS P9D-I
…bacause I prefer ASUS when it comes to motherboards. Very reasonably priced and it features 2x Intel gigabit. It’s also ITX allowing me to make a small build that will fit anywhere.
NIC: Intel I350-T4
…because it has four ports, ought to be more than enough. Found a brand new one at a great price and might as well go overkill if it doesn’t get too expensive.
I’ll add an SSD but not in a hurry as the CPU will not arrive until about a week from now.
Currently running this:
I only have 100Mbps down and 40 up so I don’t need a fast CPU. If I would build today for gigabit I would go Ryzen 3 1200. It is 90,- bucks, very efficient, has solid boards available even at lower prices and no meltdown issue.
well i wanted stable. so a server board got elected for the task. also was on a shell shocker for 160. had everything needed onboard.
you should still look into qotom, ubiquiti or protecli … these little mini pc like routers come with a lot of features and are low power consumers. if you have old hardware that can be reused thats one thing but buying pc level hardware for this if it is not enterprise doenst seem worth it to me
That’s exactly what I did to upgrade my horribly aged Dell C2D system.
Ryzen 3 1200 on a Gigabyte GA-AB350M-D3H motherboard.
I put it in a Rosewill 2U server chassis with an intel PRO/1000 Dual Port server adapter.
Since Ryzen lacks an iGPU, I put in a cheapo GT 210. I can’t help but feel even this card is overkill for pfSense though and I wonder if I can get away with an old PCI based Rage card or something just for the VGA console? Has anyone tried that on modern hardware? It would free up a 16x PCIe slot for more NICs if I decide later I want that.
I had been putting off this build for a while but recent strings of vulnerabilities discovered that impact my old Dell system quite hard has convinced me to upgrade sooner than later. This is my main line of defense for my network after all. I’m hoping this sytems has enough to handle Gb internet and maybe even get somewhat close with VPN on top.
any video card that freebsd supports will work. you only need the card to boot, install pfsense and access bios.
