> On Nov 7, 2017, at 1:39 AM, Dave Taht <dave@taht.net> wrote:
> 
> I was away from keyboard for much of this thread, I wanted to point out
> that I find the pcengines apu2 series very useful as routers and
> testbeds. They are way easier to open up than the nucs, have 3 intel
> ethernet ports, AND 2-3 mini-pcie ports, and can be had, with memory for
> under 200 bucks.
> 
> That said, the nucs are often convienent because they have video chips.

Well _that’s_ interesting, I actually already have 2x APU (not APU2) from FreeNet (my ISP) for testing. FreeNet uses these as routers.

But, the APUs I have are V1 and have a dual core with Realtek 8111E, where the APU2 has a quad core with Intel i210/211AT. The APU2 looks far preferable for testing, and I hadn’t noticed its existence. It’s dramatically cheaper than anything else I was looking at, and since I don’t need video, if the CPUs are fast enough, they look very interesting as a way to save a lot of money.

So I added those as a build:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MVxGsreiGKNXhfkMIheNFrH_GVllFfiH9RU5ws5l_aY/edit#gid=199471438 <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MVxGsreiGKNXhfkMIheNFrH_GVllFfiH9RU5ws5l_aY/edit#gid=199471438>

Basically I could get two of those for one of most anything I was looking at. Thanks for that idea!