this channel shows potential. hope to see more content soon.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

brilliant username

@mikeoxlong4043

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasComputes thank you Mr Computers. The Oxlong name has been in the family for several generations, a name a very proud of.

@YouTubestopsharingmyrealname

2 жыл бұрын

lol! sound like a report card from school, "Thomas Computers show potential and a confident attitude. He's a pleasure to have in class. I look forward to seeing his growth next semester."

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

If only my teachers left such glowing reviews

Love the zoom-in after the dead post - classic PC experience right there lol

Great video, thanks for the amazing content!

Really useful stuff man! Keep up the good work!

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Appreciate it! No plans to stop anytime soon

Love these videos!

I cracked up when I saw the message on the video that said that you trashed the I/O shield with a miter saw! 😂 Any dremel / rotary type tool with a metal cutting disc is the way to go for modifying anything on a PC case. Great video!

Sweet setup 👍!

Great vid. Very helpful.

Great, love the video!

I am interested in a router build with this case. Thanks for the video!

i liked the bloopers

Love the bloopers :)

Wow.. Just wow.. 😎👌

Very nice neat and clean I like it

Hello Thomas, It is good start for KZread channel, keep good work up🇩🇿🇩🇿🇩🇿

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

I'll try to keep 'em coming!

Has anybody ever told you that you bear a strikingly similar resemblance to Peter in Office Space?

Man I have not done a beowulf cluster since highschool around 2012 with a bunch of optiplex's was a great project!

has your power supply ever failed? i'm about to build a pfsense box with the same case. thinking of going with the ali-e 5005 board with 4x 2.5gbe, but looking for a reliable psu for the same case you have. not sure if i should buy a backup to have around. thank you for the video.

I really don't need any of this but im getting obsesed with all of this and cant stop thinking about it lol. Good to see there are other people out there who are as well. Would be cool to see a video about all the stuff your doing with all these pc's and servers but one by one and how they work together if they do

@UKsystems

Ай бұрын

You could look into open source firmware like open wrt because it’s a great improvement and gives you lots of features without spending money on your equipment. You may just need to buy a cheap programmer

I like 19'' rack staff and all the PCs I've used were built in rack enclosures. The only major issue I always encounter when dealing with rackmount builds is that they require the entirely different cooling plan to what's used in regular desktops cause you cannot afford using big tall slow spinning yet quite efficient cooling fans even in 3U cases. So the only way to solve the electronics cooling issue is to attach multiple small fans to both front and rear case walls in order to guarantee an appropriate air flow passing trough the system. In a nut shell, the rack builds happened to be quite noisy.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Big time! It's lucky that I'm not too sensitive to noisy fans

@MSM5500

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasComputes , I'm not sensitive to regular speed fan noise either and I can easily handle whatever is below 50db level. But when I chucked in some extra pair of SUNON PE60251B1 60mm ones it became just unbearable.

@m.m.m.c.a.k.e

Жыл бұрын

If it runs that hot, upgrade the architecture

Vote up, thanks for sharing the video :)

nice build, i plan on using this chassis for mine. very helpful. only thing is ahhh HDD in a router

Not bad new guy. I like the nod to _dumpsters dived_ treasures.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Free is my favorite price

I really like your work area, would you like to do a room tour at some point? would loke to watch that. also dang it, looks like YT wants me to make a pf sense router of my own, watching you video make me want to even more! maybe over the next holidays

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

In the pipeline!

Hey Thomas thanks for the great video. Just ordered same motherboard and i5-2500 CPU. What size are those fans? Looking to get a couple of extra ones for cooling.

@alexandernava9275

2 жыл бұрын

Should be 40mm, if you want something quieter go for the Noctua fans.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

40 is right! And Noctuas are perfect. Since this thing isn't near me when I'm trying to sleep, the noise wasn't as much of a concern.

Nice !!!!

Nice video! Post more about your setup!

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Definitely in the pipeline!

Great video. So did you use the same network card from your dell and put it in the rack mounted build?

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Yup! The thing works like a charm, but I’m itching to do a 10Gig upgrade at some point

@jdoc99

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasComputes If you upgrade to 10Gig would you need to upgrade your motherboard or just the NIC?

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

@@jdoc99 Just the NIC, the rest of the computer can easily handle a 10Gig card

I running a similar pfsense on a older optiplex board. I have noticed better performance by using uefi at install. Since you are using a hdd instead of ssd´s like me, i am interested if you compared the performance? Is there any difference at all? I didnt test this yet. Only things i tested was lx4 vs mirrored zfs. Also i tryed to install on a pci-e nvme disk but it seems the board dont supports that :D

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

I've only used HDDs, so I can't speak on performance differences, but I've had no problems. Since this video, I've added a second drive and set them up as a mirrored ZFS pool. Works like a charm!

@DigitEgal

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasComputes ok then i think its because the old dell hardware i used isnt working well with ssd´s (also its only sata2) so the uefi install fixed that issue for me.

@tw3145wallenstein

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasComputes i have my pfsense insall running on a adata 156gb SSD and has been for 5 years now, my only observation is that it boots up faster with SSD much like any computer. pfsense is mostly loaded to memory after boot so other then writing a few log files and the random config change when you make them there is really very little disk io after bootup

What does your pfSense box connect to before the LAN, I assume a router supplied by the ISP which has RJ11.. I'm curious how you do this without a modem within the pfSense box? Saying that I'm on VDSL2 but still limited to like 10Mib sending :D

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

So my provider back then was standard broadband... not the best, but certainly not terrible. Now I'm on symmetrical fiber, but in both cases, I had an ISP-supplied modem/router combo box (can't believe they make you rent hardware, am I right?). I just put them in passthrough mode, so pfsense is still able to work with the correct public IPv4 address. Hope this helps!

the fans..... in the front why are they so clogged up with so much wires in front ?

Nice build! I looked for a long time for 1u chassis with io on the front and there weren't many. Decided on a Supermicro 505-203b with a supermicro board and an Intel Atom C2758 cpu and a Pci with 4x 10gig sfp+. I just wish there were more chassis with front IO available!

@ThomasComputes

Жыл бұрын

I'm thinking of revisiting this project with a reversed (front IO) chassis... Sounds like a great build you've got there!

Do those fans actually do anything (besides make a lot of noise) given all the wiring and ram in the way? I'm also curious if that PSU crapped itself shortly after making the video?

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

They're high static pressure fans, so they do make a ton of noise for sure, but I'm most interested in replacing warm air with cool air frequently. And that PSU is OUT lol, replaced with a much more dependable Silverstone last year

What is your isp setup? Ie bandwidth speeds dual wan etc? Nice setup btw.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

In that house I couldn’t get more than 100M, but nowadays I’ve got symmetrical gigabit fiber

HI! I have the same DELL refurbished computer which i am not using in this moment and would like to use as pfsense router. Can you tell more about that setup? Thank you very much.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Sure! For that one I threw in the same NIC I used here, and just installed pfSense. In terms of processing power and memory, you really don't need much!

So how much do the components matter when building a pfsense router? I have an old PC I'm looking to convert and was wondering if things like more ram and using SSD is better than HDD or does it matter much?

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

I would say not that much. Of course it's nice to have more ports, so an external NIC is a great idea (and necessary when your motherboard only has one port). As far as RAM and SSDs go, 4 gigs is more than enough, and unless you want it to boot quickly, you'll be alright with a hard drive. pfSense doesn't need to do a whole lot of reads/writes to the drive during operation after all, but a helpful tip is to mirror two boot drives if you have them for redundancy. It's super easy to set up a zfs pool during installation thanks to FreeBSD!

@schellman2

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasComputes Ok great tips! Something I have heard about normal SOHO routers is that the processors are not the best and get overwhelmed when using a lot of data. So how good of a processor would you recommend? I have an i7-7700k for it, I'm just not sure what is considered good for a router.

@michaelhenry3234

Жыл бұрын

@@schellman2 You probably don't need advice now, but a router doesn't need much performance. An atom would work fine for most networks. It's really easy to go overkill with a router and waste a bunch of energy.

how does that perform? meaning can you route at gigabit speeds?

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Performs well! It's always been fully gigabit-capable, and I'm probably going to be going 10 Gig soon!

How well does the cooling solution work for that chip?

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

While it is a little noisy, it’s great! My highs are about 40C, which is also helped by the fact that pfSense is extremely lightweight, and my processor is fairly overkill for the application.

@coinsea5803

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasComputes thanks for the info!!

I don't know all that much about pfsense but wouldn't it make more sense to put like a 120gb ssd in there? I'm not sure if pfsense takes up too much space on a drive or if the router takes a good bit of time to boot up after being powered off (ie. power outage or maintenance). Not a 100% sure if speed matters in this case.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Good question! Once pfsense boots, it essentially exists in system memory, where transfer speed is super fast. I did upgrade this device with mirrored boot drives (handy zfs feature), so system failures aren’t as big of a concern. Booting up takes about a minute, but I ensure that restarts almost never happen with a UPS, and when they do, the UPS sends a shutdown command to the device to gracefully exit each task the router is performing. In fact, I may just make a video about all that! I used hdds instead of ssds because it’s what I had laying around, and if I’m anything, I’m frugal.

@walkermisek5526

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasComputes Wow! That’s actually really cool, I’ve been contemplating about building a router myself and I don’t know how pfsense works really so that’s really helpful to know!

Cool

Hello Sir, I just installed pfsense in my pc and everything is working just fine except Captive Portal. I watched many tutorials and setting up things just like them or guided in tutorial but my case is when I enable captive portal it asks for username and passwords and voucher but when I try to input voucher codes it says invalid voucher. I tried to change rsa keys and reconfigured and reinstalled the whole setup but still I am on a same stage. Can you please guide me.

@ThomasComputes

Жыл бұрын

I might do a video on captive portal, sorry to hear you’re having trouble with it!

How much did the total build cost? I'm debating on either building or buying a rack mounted solution.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Great question! I would say just north of $300 for everything, but I will say you can find some pretty nice motherboards or all-in-one SOC boards that are purpose-built for firewall applications on sites like eBay. CPU and memory requirements aren’t high here, but you will want at least 2 network ports.

@HacksToTheMax01

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the reply! I ended up getting a really good deal on a checkpoint firewall that I couldn't refuse. Planning on getting pfsense installed asap.

Got a used lenovo pc here with a i5 3470t 8gb and a 256gb asd for 100$ cdn here locally. Added a 3nd intel network card and its a decent pfsense box

i am assuming your using the front facing camera of the iPhone. Try the rear cameras and a selfie stick or something for vlogging. The iPhone camera is fine.

May want to keep an eye on those temps with the little drop of thermal paste

@1fashionsouls

Жыл бұрын

ohhhhh stop

Can you help me understand.... I see you have 2 switches at the top of your rack but why is there so many ethernet cables connecting the two switches together?

@tanmaywho

2 жыл бұрын

patch panel in the top slot(just a bunch of rj45 connectors connecting wire coming from the wall, makes your rack work easy since all the connection are at the front), then a switch in the second slot. hope this helps.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

^ Helps a lot with organization

which network card is it?

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

i350-t4 -- 4 gigabit ports

PF blocker is the entire reason I went with PFsense. also because a coworker gave me a Netgate 3100.

I was thinking about how to build a PFsense router as in the next few months we'll be moving to a new home that has ethernet built into the home and expect that the netgear router I have will not handle the load. At peaks I expect to hit 2-3 gbps. It seems to struggle as is. But plan on building a mid tower pc case using a ryzen system. Still debating on 4 or 6 cores and probably need a gpu for boot. But have a extra one lying around. I probably will get the same NIC as lot of people recommending those intel i340 cards.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

They're great cards, and fairly cheap too. And the PC you build doesn't need to be all too beefy either (it doesn't take much to beat a Netgear router). Good luck on your quest!

@ChaseMMD

Жыл бұрын

@Jeremiah Bakker I'm running Ryzen 7 1700x (way overbuilt) and 16 GB's of ECC RAM (Parity kind). The Intel x340-t2 works good. Haven't put it to the test but plan on pushing close to a theoretically limit of 10 gbps on the local network. 2.5 Gbit dedicated to my server and 2.5 Gbit to my wifi router, in additional to having 3 additional 1gbps connections as well. So imagine the Intel i340-t2 be fine and already have all the hardware in hand and quirks/issues are fixed. So be set in stone unless issues arise.

do you still have the antec p180? I will buy it off you if youre down

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Afraid not, I donated it, but good luck on your search! Those things are ancient but very well designed

@faarisinamdar2988

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasComputes thanks man I’ve been hunting for old cases like that

I have pfsense on a dell wyse 5070 extended Pentium Silver silent m.2 drive and a INTEL I350-t4 4 port nic

3:00 Just a tip: do not place the motherboard on top of its bag when assembling.

pssst.... AES-NI is no longer required for Pfsense. They dropped that a few months after announcing it would be required.

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Yup, little oversight on my end!

so many cables in front of the fans

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

I smell an upcoming video topic!

What was the original CPU?

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

i5-2500

I think you can rotate the nic

Awesome upgrade to your realtor I am also looking to upgrade mine as well I am using a legacy Hardware which is a Surface device I am constricted to power usage some looking a low power Rota that can also run pfSense my network is not as demanding as yours I hope you get very good mileage

Commenting to trick the KZread to promote your video

So the apevia was your best, most reliable choice? 😂

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

With my budget at the time, yes, but it’s been replaced with a Silverstone power supply since then. This might become a video topic soon!

10:55: Tank, load the jump program

Have you measured the power consumption of your build?

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Yes! This router stays around 40-50 watts most of the time.

@martinwashington3152

2 жыл бұрын

He's not even started out being an energy gremlin yet, let the fella get his feet under the table first :D

On 0:33 you said never used the modem you showed, less than a minute later you said you tried all kinds of things on the same box. That is not convincing for a first video. The truth and honesty will give you the most likes and subscriptions.

well wanna see what's all those pc's doing in your closets....

would have been nice to see the whole processes, seems like footage lost then a break, then cut to everything being done and installed, sorry but this was not useful to me who was looking at how its done

Just a note At the start the netgear is shilt and dont use and never have then at 1.20 it didnt work under load I did look at your video but those two comments makes me wonder your wording ??? Somthing maybe for your editing ??

pfSense ..... booo!!!

Maybe your YT will be more informative because of your personal experience.

Caugh in a lie in the first 32 seconds. You never used it you said, then 1:30 you added devices and did zoom calls etc etc and the router did not like it... so what is it did or did you not use it? Anyways, disliked.

@RedFalcon696

5 ай бұрын

Good observation, I noticed this as well. I have used that exact router before circa late-2000s and early 2010s, and it will easily handle those mentioned Zoom video call tasks for a single user, even with modern devices in the 2020s. The claims of stating to never use the device and then stating it is inadequate when not knowing anything about it... at least test the device out and be honest about it, it would look a lot more professional. Good luck to this guy in the future.

terrible didn't show how it work and how to connect cable, I wasted my time watching this!

I hope to see more content from your channel. Also, share your instagram and share tech info their too

@ThomasComputes

2 жыл бұрын

Procrastinated a bit on this, but it’s finally all out there now!

I have a perfect pfsense router setup. Please message me if your interested.