The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Some links on the pfSense hardware I am planning to use.

• [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines APU.4D4 Throughput : PFSENSE
• [Wayback/Archive] Firewall throughput measurements: OPNsense on APU4d4, OPNsense in a Proxmox VM, and OpenWRT on Turris Omnia | René Mayrhofer

Whereas apu1 was totally different, apu2, apu3, apu4 and apu6 are very similar. The letters after the first digit indicate evolution of the boards. The first and last digit set apart features. Together, they form a confusing matrix which is not really made clear at the PC Engines web-site as some intermediate categories are missing which makes it hard to get an overview.

Basically their shop site has the list of most current products and is easiest to get links to the actual product names. Like many Swiss companies, they accept multiple currencies, so there are three links to the shop:

• 1=CHF: [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines Order Form (CHF)
• 2=EUR: [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines Order Form (EUR)
• 4=USD: [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines Order Form (USD)
• All other values (like 0, 3 or 8): [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines sales (which also contains a list of distributors)

Most products are not available in 2022, which has hopefully changed by now. Many causes: [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines apu lead times, just like all other electronics.

Some points to consider:

• the *2 have 2 gibibyte of RAM
• the *4 have 4 gibibyte of RAM
• the 2*2, 3* and 4* have i211AT LAN
• the 2*4 have i210AT LAN
• the 4* have SIM support built in
• the 2* do not have SIM support

Anyway: apu2e4 board (which is the evolution of the apu2d4) works for my use case, though I wish it had 4 network ports instead of 3.

Note all board have this CPU: AMD Embedded G series GX-412TC, 1 GHz quad Jaguar core with 64 bit and AES-NI support, 32K data + 32K instruction cache per core, shared 2MB L2 cache.

For a fully functional system you need:

• board like
  • [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines apu2e4 product file (3 i210AT LAN / AMD GX-412TC CPU / 4 GB DRAM)
  • [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines apu3d4 product file (3 i211AT LAN / AMD GX-412TC CPU / 4 GB DRAM)
  • [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines apu4d4 product file (4 i211AT LAN / AMD GX-412TC CPU / 4 GB DRAM / dual SIM)
• 12V power supply: outer/inner 5.5/2.5mm diameter barrel connector, for instance:
  • EUR [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines ac12veur3 product file
  • UK [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines ac12vuk2 product file
  • USA [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines ac12vus2 product file
• either
  • SD card (or microSD card with SD adapter)
  • SATA SSD plus power and SATA cable
  • mSATA card
  • USB flash drive (USB memory stick)
• enclosure like:
  • [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines case1d2blku product file (3 LAN, black)
  • [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines case1d4blku product file (4 LAN, black)

Related blog posts:

• OpenBSD on PC Engines APU2 | Hacker News
• Headless: PC Engines APU System Boards Feature AMD G-Series T40E APU, 3 Gigabit Ethernet Ports

–jeroen