Nearly pre-orderd the A1 but $18 shipping on a $20 case is hard to swallow.
Your build looks great!
Thx!
yeah the A1 geeek looks like a better fit for this build for sure, the preorder for the A1 is new or I would probably have gone for that one instead. The A2 geeek case is small but has room for a graphics card on the back side, drives, and a small psu, all of which I don’t need. I might swap the firewall into the A1 and build a desktop gaming box into the A2. The shipping is DHL international to the US thus why it’s 20bucks.
Hey, I just came across Zeta’s Akasa build and absolutely love it!
However, temp-related shenanigans are an doubt.
Would it be wise to recreate such an build? Or am I better of looking at something actively cooled?
//been seeing a lot of people suggesting an DELL R210II as well, does anyone have any input on this matter?
I don’t have serious thermal concerns about it, given the right workload and environment.
While I did build a second system in the Silverstone case, it wasn’t really as a replacement for the Akasa, per se. I’m still planning on using the 3470T in the Akasa as my pfSense box, with the 1260L/Silverstone system being a low-power server for services that I don’t want to go offline when I take my main Lego build down (CUPS printer server, Home Assistant, etc.).
I still believe the Akasa is fine as long as you put some thought into it and don’t go crazy. In my case, it’ll be a mostly light-load router, and will live in my basement, where the ambient temperature is substantially cooler already. That said, if you’re truly worried about it, the Silverstone or any number of other small ITX cases with a modest active cooler are totally viable too.
I bought the same case, but the CPU Cooler was too big to put the lid on to fit in my rack, so I ordered this one Thermaltake 1U Low-Profile CPU Cooler
I also have 2 40mm Noctua’s with a 4 pin splitter. As soon as I get cooler in I’ll post a pic. Hopefully, that will help with cooling things down.
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I don’t think the TT cooler is going to fit either. I had to go with the Silverstone. Check my updated build:
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Sadly, I actually saw your updated post after I posted. I am sorry about that. and placed that SilverStone model in Amazon list. I do want to say though that the SilverStone says it’s 23mm tall, and the TT says it’s 17mm in height. Let’s see how it goes though…<I’ll keep ya posted>
I looked at the 90 degree riser card, and I have to say like another user said, my PCI Ex4 slot isn’t open, it’s closed so there is no way to fit that riser card. I instead have the Timack PCI-e PCI Express3.0 4X Extension pcie 4X Cable
Sounds like a plan. I considered going cable, but all the quality ones like the one you posted are a tough price to swallow for me.
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@COZisBack, I finally got all the parts I didn’t put the Intel card in yet, just wanted to show you how the Thermal Take looked inside.
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@COZisBack, no you didn’t but I had an Amazon card from my birthday, so it honestly cost me nothing. LOL but I think part of our discussion was if it would fit and I said I’d show you the pictures either way, and it fits with room to spare.
My God man! Your PCI-E cable and cooler costs more than my Board and CPU!
Yeah I’m sure it does, the cooler was bought with a gift card. So, it cost me nothing really, but I did pony up for the cable.
Anyone having issues with the second NIC, the red AMT one?
I’ve disable it twice and pfsense and linux cannot see the 2nd NIC. Yes, I can see the lights working on it but now IP assigned and no activity under either OSes. Any ideas.
Yes, you have to turn off AMT. There’s some details about it under “Motherboard notes” in the first post.
I’m trying to find an Akasa Galileo case, but they seem to have gotten very expensive. How were these gotten so cheaply before?
I’ve enjoyed my USG for a few years, and while the UI is slick, it is slow, and to configure anything not directly supported by the UI wizards is more complicated than doing the same in pfSense as you have to TFTP in, figure out which custom JSON file on the filesystem to edit, and then get that to persist across upgrades… I gave up.
Also Ubiquiti really drags their feet on IPv6 support. It’s perpetually Alpha or Beta functionality and incomplete. I know other network guys that feel the same way about IPv6, but the Kids see the sub-optimal network connection judgement on the XBOX and complain. I once got UPNP and IPV6 going once so the XBOX was super happy, but after a USG update or reset, with the UI having changed all around I gave up trying to figure it out a second time. The USG UI for things like UPNP gets radical changes periodically which don’t really add features, but just send you trying to figure out where things went. I’ve decided I’d rather learn once how to add a “standard” firewall rule than deal with a continuously morphing USG UI that doesn’t ever quite do what you need.
And did I mention the USG is slow? Enabling the IDS / IPS drops throughput to under 85Mbps! (they warn you of this) For the cost of the more powerful USG Pro ($344), you could get yourself some very capable pfSense hardware.
I purchased the USG because it was the cheapest OTS router that did load balancing – and I didn’t know about pfSense at that time.
When your income is taxed and your purchases are taxed, a penny saved is worth much more than a penny earned. I would not recommend spending $139 on a gutless USG. Don’t buy the could key either! If you use Ubiquiti’s very fine wireless equipment, run the controller software on a small ubuntu VM (8-10 GB RAM) for basically free - and the management UI will run much much faster than it does on the cloud key.
Maybe look into the Velka 3 for the itx case with room for an expansion slot using a riser cable. It seems to be relatively affordable (compared to the other ultra small form factor boutique itx cases that go for hundreds)
Ever since LTT did a video on it, its been out of stock. It is a cool little SFF case though, not worth $80 to me as its more then half the cost of the entire build, but may to someone.
Is the quad port NIC an important piece of the pfsense build? I’ve looked online and it looks like the Intel quad ports are recommended because people trust the hardware, but I was wondering if there was any reason beyond that to buy one for a pfsense build.