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Comment by nottorp | Hacker News Reader

So long, my Atom D2500 homebrew router.

Say, what's the state of fanless dual (or even triple) NIC boards these days? Intel network chips please, the CPU can be whatever. It looks like I need one that does 64 bit before 18.04 runs out of support.

Edit: x86_64 CPU please, not ARM.

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I've got a pc-engines apu2c4. It's a great little x86_64 PC with 3 Intel NICs. I used to use it as my primary router, and today I'm using it as a development platform for a custom router OS based on Fedora.

There's also the espressobin, which is an AArch64 board with 2 NICs, one attached to a Topaz switch. The espressobin has mainline Linux support, which is awesome.

You still have 3+ years until free security support runs out in 2023. But that said, check out this QOTOM fanless unit that has 4 Intel NICs with a Celeron J1900 64-bit processor. I can attest that it works great as a home/SMB router with Sophos XG (although you could use Ubuntu if you wanted). Just add memory and an msata SSD. There are similar models available on Amazon too with varying hardware configurations.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01KX9OU58

I know i have 3 years but... new toys ;)

Thanks for the suggestion (amazon reviewers aren't so happy with it though). I want a motherboard not a NUC-like system though. Still using sata, running some servers on it etc.

I've learned to take Amazon reviews, especially those where there's a high likelihood of user error such as this case, with a giant grain of salt :-)

A few years ago I went with a SuperMicro MBD-X11SBA-LN4F as a router motherboard. It has held up well with excellent VPN performance and a high level of stability with a few hundred megabit home internet connection. A fairly similar model would be the MBD-A1SRi-2758F. Both of these are Mini-ITX compatible so its easy to stick them in whatever chassis you want.

The ODroid H2 is what you are looking for:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2/

Your atom cpu is already 64-bit.

Random example of bad news here:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/877703/only-32-bit-distros-a...

The CPU may be, but the bios and motherboard... possibly not so much. The system is pretty old and could use a replacement anyway before it croaks on me.

If it is a typical mini itx board, it should support 64-bit just fine.

Usually the only problem is 32-bit EFI which isn't a big deal to work around (you just copy an extra file to the usb drive you copy the installer to) and the computer will otherwise work fine with a 64-bit OS.

And in the "google is useless" saga, i haven't been able to find anythying but vague 'doesn't work' posts and nothing about a possible fix...

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