Firewall updates complete. No more SFP+ Transceiver wonking things up.
100% on HPE-Branded and Firmwared Intel X550-T2 NICs (there's still some HP/HPE synergies with firmware...like my HP RTX A4000 talks to the HPE ProLiant FW)
Doing speed tests to max out CPU usage, I'm getting 12% max with the power savings set to max efficiency and the system is idling super, super cool. The Atom CPU in the old Netgate 6100 used to run at ~65-75C.
@bearpupzak That's the conundrum. FreeBSD supports Intel NICs better than just about anything else, save Chelsio, but the Chelsio NICs use a bit more power and run hot. Since this is a workstation-based Firewall (HP Z2, 32GB ECC, i5-14500, Micron 7450 Max SSD), I couldn't have NICs that needed tons of airflow.
For Linux, I usually would go Broadcom or Mellanox (Yuck, nVidia now...)
But for this system, I needed to stay as well-supported as possible. The weird thing is, the Netgate 6100 uses Intel NICs and it was okay with the FS NbaseT to SFP+ transceiver. The Intel X520, which is one of the best supported network devices under FreeBSD -and- the Intel X710 both had severe upspeed issues with that transceiver. I tried a 10GTek and it was better, but still not great.
Everything is rock solid now, but I'm 100% copper, so no chance for SFP+ module issues.
@AMS @bearpupzak Idle power consumption is ~22-30w on the full system. Under full load, I'm seeing ~55-65w.
I've got the system running in power efficient mode.
LeoBurr
Zak Bärhund
AMS