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I've got a pc-engines apu2c4. It's a great little x86_64 PC with 3 Intel NICs. I used to use it as my primary router, and today I'm using it as a development platform for a custom router OS based on Fedora.

There's also the espressobin, which is an AArch64 board with 2 NICs, one attached to a Topaz switch. The espressobin has mainline Linux support, which is awesome.



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My favorite platform is PC Engines APU 2. Consider something like the apu2e4 with its aluminum case and a msata card. I turn them into routers, media servers, Bitcoin nodes, etc. More expensive than Pies but I’ve had great success with them.

https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm


I built my own, several years ago, on a (fanless!) board like this:

http://www.pcengines.ch/apu3a4.htm

It has 3 NIC's, for inside, outside, and DMZ. You can also put a wifi radio on it, and make it an access point.

I run a full Ubuntu on it, with local DNS, DHCP, Shorewall, etc.


I recommend PC Engines if you want something with a bit more support:

https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm

They’re small passively cooled embedded x86 machines. They haven’t made the jump to 10GBit, and their newest model (the apu2) is getting pretty old. However, they have very long production timeframes (many years) for each board config, which leads to stability over time.


PC Engines APU2 offered unmatched flexibility in the sub-$200 x86 segment:

  low-power, fanless 
  open-source coreboot firmware
  Intel NICs (vs Realtek)
  open schematics
  USB, SD, SATA or mSATA storage
  ECC RAM
  GPIO
  TPM and DRTM
  3rd party cases for rack/wall mount
  supported by Linux, Xen, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, pfSense, OPNsense
They are taking orders until June 2023, for shipment in ~6 months.

Alternatives have different feature subsets, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35635900#35636898


Look at the apu2 line from pc-engines. I have two, and they're great devices, x86_64 even: https://pcengines.ch/

pcengines APU2 is also a pretty sweet platform: https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm

Also for homelabbers the https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/Mini-ITX/SYS-E300... is like the "ultra-NUC", really small but 2x10 gbe NICS built in, plus IPMI.


Check out the Qotom fanless mini-PCs. Mine has 5x network interfaces, and it's a straight forward x86-64 system. I run OpenWrt on mine, but it's just a PC so you can install any mainstream Linux distribution on it. It comes with an enclosure, which might not be what you're looking for.

The cost depends on how much memory / storage you need, obviously, but it's not that different from the ALIX/APU once you include things like power supplies, cases, etc.


The ALIX/APU platform is sadly the only one on the market that:

- has at least three network interfaces

- is a relatively straightforward x86 system you can just slap a mainstream Linux distro on

- is small enough to be integrated into a custom enclosure

- is affordable.

It's been a reliable platform with only one broken serial port and one broken ethernet interface in some 500 deployed systems (flash endurance is another story, however).


I was also looking for a successor to the PC Engines APUs and came across https://teklager.se/en/ that lists some possible alternatives that you might find interesting.

Personally I was looking to build a router so I ended up buying a fanless N100 based mini PC from Aliexpress (e.g.: search term is "N100 firewall appliance") and have been very satisfied with it so far (Proxmox homelab with OPNsense running as a VM).


Try the PCEngines APU board! http://www.pcengines.ch/apu.htm

The only downside is it uses Realtek NICs instead of Intel ones. Otherwise it's pretty much perfect.


For people interested in building a firewall or just boards with multiple GbE ports I can recommend a swiss company PC Engines https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm They make really nice x86 boards with AMD chips.

An alternative, if you want to truly get it manufactured yourself (the schematics and materials list are all open source):

https://www.turris.cz/en/hardware

This device is a lot more powerful than the PC Engines APU. As nice as the APU is, its CPU cannot support 1Gbps throughput over the NICs.


If you're looking for a non-Intel non-Chinese board, there is APU:

https://pcengines.ch/apu2.htm

* AMD Embedded G series, 1 GHz CPU

* 2 or 4 GB RAM

* 2 to 4 NICs

* coreboot BIOS

* ~150 EUR

I'm using a predecessor for quite some time as a firewall and DNS/DHCP server.


I use a mini-ITX board (GA-C1007UN), which has an embedded Celeron CPU and two GbE ports. It serves me for almost five years now as a home server, router and Wi-Fi access point. The downside is that it requires an ATX power supply and is not completely silent.

pcengines apu platform is great if you're comfortable with command line. they are EOL now (no new hardware updates) but doing the same thing with any Linux box is trivial... plenty of off the shelf options for modular hardware.

I was looking for something low power to run privoxy, probably on pfsense, and ended up doing the kickstarter for https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/874883570/marvell-espre... counting on ARM support for pfsense very soon.

It's huge shame Pascal basically stopped building those boards since AMD and Intel wouldn't play ball. I'd really like to have something like an APU with 10G connectivity with an x86 processor that was not built and designed in China running open firmware. With PC Engines gone now, I think you're basically out of luck.

Thanks! That machine looks pretty awesome, and it even supports ECC and core boot.

I might have to pick one up and see if I can get more SATA through the mini PCIe and have to be a storage server that also routes traffic. I've been hoping for an ARM chip, but with ECC, this might just win out.


Second OPNsense. And there are nice fanless x86 mini PCs, router size on aliexpress
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