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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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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