Find a cheap 1U box on ebay and build a pfsense box. If you can't find one for cheap buy a 1U SuperMicro Atom barebones, that's what I had done if I had not found a cheap 1U box first.
Something like this:
http://www.ncix.com/detail/supermicro-barebone-server-sys-5015a-ehf-d525-1u-cd-58951.htm
Have to buy your own ram and hard drive though.
That hardware will more than run pfsense fine. I had it running on a P3 before, though after an update the P3 did not quite cut it when I got FTTH, it even struggled with my ADSL a bit.
A good firewall/router like pfsense is a good foundation to start a better network. Next you can add a managed switch and make the LAN port a trunk port then have pfsense handle the inter vlan routing rules and such. For wireless you can get Unifi APs. All this stuff is a big more expensive but it makes for a nice solid network with tons of options.
There are so many networked (wireless or wired) devices in my home it is no wonder these store bought routers cant cope.
6 smartphones
6 tablets
3 gaming systems all wireless
Smart tv and blu ray devices
3 laptops
5 desktops
Its ridiculous.
I can even use two or more APs to split the wireless load.
i ran mine with a 600mhz p3 for like 4 years... never had a problem with it and only reason i let it go was i had newer spare parts laying around
Hmm. How do you guys feel about a 2.6GHz Pentium 4 based Celeron (socket 775) on an ASUS P5GL-MX with 2GB RAM fare for a router? Cause I have that laying here on a shelf. Just need a case, PSU, and two Intel NICs.
Anything that is a "real" computer is going to run at around 100w or more
Nonsense. My file server has a LGA1155 Ivy Bridge G1620 in a H67 mini-ITX board, 2x4GB of RAM, 1x SSD, 1x 500GB 2.5" scratch drive, 4x 4TB 3.5" Seagates, and running Windows 8.1 (I use Storage Spaces), and it idles a smidge over 20W at the wall (this is when the HDDs--the biggest power draw--have idled long enough to spin down). Its maximum draw during a power stress test--that is, I started to copy data from the 500GB drive to the 4x4 array to get all 5 spinning drives active while also running an AIDA64 stress test on the CPU, RAM, and GPU--was just a bit north of 60W.
My HTPC, which also has a dual-core LGA1155 Ivy Bridge, idles around 15W and has a maximum power draw of somewhere between 20 and 30W (it's been a while, so I don't recall the exact numbers). I'm sure you can do even better with Haswell, and certainly with Bay Trail.
Yea, it's not quite as low as my store-bought router (which comes under 10W; and BTW, I personally recommend a good high-end store-bought loaded with DD-WRT instead of building your own), but at least it's not off by a whole order of magnitude like it would be if using old Hotburst-era technology.
The days of 100+W computers is history (unless you're talking about a gaming rig, but that's an entirely different beast).
Just go read some system reviews man. Under 100w is super common these days. Last I remember you like to recycle everything and run older stuff, so you're probably not getting close to that efficiency.Holy crap how did you manage that? Or, when is the last time you calibrated your multimeter? Maybe it's completely off. All computer systems I've tested run at 100w or very near. My file server actually runs at about 65w but that was before I added drives and it was tested while it was not under load. I'm talking about from the wall btw, too lazy to test every individual rail then add up.
Even my Atom based 1U Supermicro environmental server runs at around 60w or so, and that's before I connected all the sensors.
Workstation is anothrer story, 300+ watts alone but it's a core i7 with an add-on video card.
Efficiency was not really my ultimate goal here. Stability and reliability was. Efficiency is great, but I'm ok with "semi-efficient" for this purpose. I agree the P4 based system is off the table as that was a pig. Atom based is probably the best way to go at the moment.
Just go read some system reviews man. Under 100w is super common these days. Last I remember you like to recycle everything and run older stuff, so you're probably not getting close to that efficiency.
Most of my stuff is actually pretty new. The old stuff actually uses less power I find, the new stuff requires massive heat sinks because of how hot it gets and heat = power usage. It's just the first time I hear of an actual PC (and not something like a Raspberry Pi) running at such low wattage. What kind of tweaks do people do to get a PC to run so low? Downclock? Even my Atom based server runs at about 75w. That is considered a low power usage platform. Sorry for hijacking this thread, I'm just really curious as to how people can get PCs to use such little power. It would greatly improve my UPS run time as well.
What are you using to measure power usage? I use a Kill-A-Watt to measure at the wall, and the figures reported are pretty much in line with what I'd expect (plug in a lamp with a 60W bulb as a quick and simple sanity check).
I usually use a clamp on meter, get the amperage of the hot wire, then times by the voltage which is usually 120 or near. My PDU also shows amperage and it's at 3 though there's no decimal so I suspect it's in the higher range of 3. Before I upgraded to a my big UPS setup I was running off an APC that has a watt display and it was about 300w but that's before I added two more servers. I have a watt display on my new battery backup system but when it runs off batteries the numbers are all over the place so I think it's defective, just never got around to figuring it out. It uses a shunt on the DC side.
Oh that's another thing, I'm running off 120v, are you running off 240? I think that makes things a bit more efficient, though I did not figure it would make THAT much a difference.
edit: Just tested with a 100w bulb came up to 98.4w
FYI your method doesn't account for the power factor in AC. Depending on your power supplies and load you could be using a lot more total power than apparent at the device. The excess is lost as heat in the wiring system.