Hello, I have been lurking and browsing these forums for quite some time. I have read multiple threads on hardware builds and have been trying to come up with something for my first home build without breaking the bank.
First, a bit about my home network for a family of 4:
TimeWarner roadrunner internet cable - I think I get about 35 Mbps down and about 1 Mbps up. I have a gigabit lan and also a wireless ap. There are 4 computers connected (one on the wire and three over wifi) and some tablets and phones. One fileserver and two networked printers are also on the network.
I'd like to run Sophos with everything on, especially the content filtering to protect the kids in the house. My ap can do vlan tagging so I'd like to set up a guest wireless network and/or captive portal for when friends come over. I already have an Intel dual NIC card that I can use so I figure one NIC for WAN , one for the LAN, and one for the AP/VLANs.
I have seen the posts about the Atom d2500/d2550 builds and that they might be limiting in certain networks but I was not sure if my network and bandwidth are small enough to be okay with that kind of build anyway. I know the new Atoms are coming out but my overall budget (about $400/$500) might not work out.
Alternatively, I specced out this build:
Newegg.com - SilverStone SG06BB-LITE Black Aluminum front panel, Steel body Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case ($49.99)
Newegg.com - SILVERSTONE SFX ST30SF 300W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply ($49.99)
Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-B85N LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard ($89.99)
Newegg.com - Intel Core i3-4130T Haswell 2.9GHz LGA 1150 35W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4400 BX80646I34130T ($134.99)
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL - Newegg.com ($74.99)
I have plenty of extra hard drives at home so I'll repurpose one of those as well as add my Intel dual NIC card. This build comes to about $400. I would prefer as small a case as possible and as low-power as possible too.
So I guess I'd like to first know whether the Atom d2500/d2550 type of build might suffice for my netwrok and also general thoughts on the alternative build and the components I listed above.
Thanks in advance!
Edit: forgot to add a few other devices to our network: 2 Wii's, 2 Roku's, 1 AppleTV, 2 Nintendo DS, and probably a few other devices that access the internet and the network.
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