[sudo-sys] [omni-sys] Gateway dead, Private network down

[Marc Juul]

I found a cheaper alternative. I recently got one of the older systems
from PC Engines and I've been really happy with it. I looked at their
newer stuff and they have this:

  https://www.pcengines.ch/apu4c4.htm

Which has AES-NI and four LAN ports.

Assembled and with an aluminum case it comes to $145 + shipping.

It works by having the CPU on the bottom of the mainboard and directly
connecting it to the aluminum case which acts as a heat spreader. I
tested mine with a high-powered wifi card and mSATA drive attached,
maxing out CPU, IO and wifi transmit, and it didn't go above 79 C at
25 C ambient. Both my CPU and this CPU can take 90 C. Since we're not
adding a WiFi card we can probably expect better performance. I'd
assume we won't hit 90 C until ambient temperatures get close to ~40 C
and then only if maxing out the CPU.

I've written a script that shuts down the computer at a set
temperature. Because the case itself is the heatsink, we can simply
strap any additional CPU heat-sink + fan to the bottom (or top) of the
case and add as much cooling as we want.

Or we could just have the script send us an email and shut it down at
87 C and hope we'll never hit those temperatures.

btw, this board has the bonus of running coreboot + SeaBIOS.

On 6/27/19, Yardena Cohen <yardenack at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 20, 2019 at 4:38 PM Marc Juul <marc at juul.io> wrote:
>>   https://mitxpc.com/products/nml-nf692
>>
>> Price with 8 GB ram: $476
>>
>> It's a fanless case though :/ but I guess we can configure
>> auto-shutdown if it gets too hot?
>
> It says Fan Support: Supports 2 x 40x40x10mm
>
> I'm gonna reach out to omni's finance wg about feasibility of paying
> for this along with sonic fiber.
>