It would be so lovely to see more modern alternatives to this motherboard (amd gx-412 based). An modern Intel Pentium, Celeron or Atom could make such an interesting portable base station (pentium 8500 please, or even am older/slower celeron n5105), capable of being good wifi & a nice mini-server/ap.
There are quite a lot of Celeron J4125 boxes available with quad Intel NICs and Wifi that people use for pfsense routers. I have a 1U version that I use with 2.5 GbE, and there are a million variants of SFF boxes built around the same basic hardware.
I have a pretty alright old Celeron laptop, Chuwi with a great screen, same 3-generations-old Goldmont era core. Nice machine, even with it's nearly 3 year old Atom.
Personally though I'd really like to see a more modern offerning. A Pentium 8500 would be such an interesting really micro server. 4 newer Atoms/E-cores with AVX & AVX2, plus one big P-core... very compelling. Even a last gen N5105 or J6413 Tremont I hear is a huge boost over the old Goldmont.
The product development lifecycles tend to be years long, alas. I really wish people would just make really small boards, low-features, fast, & load them with oculink to let us do what we will with the cores.
For use as a router, though, those are not necessarily better. The J4125 is more than capable of routing way more than 1 gbps, while running several services. And as the STH review points out, the N5105 in that unit has a bit more oomph but also uses quite a bit more power, which is IMO important for an always on or portable router. J4125 also isn't that old, it's a Q4 2019 SKU which has the added benefit of making it cheaper.
Agreed that power consumption is a big factor. Something is crazy that these things are 10w. My i5-9600t's idle at 6w (albeit I think Im a bit better than Patrick at tuning boards).
My interest is less in a routing system, & more in having a microserver with some real capacity for use, for running some basic local services. I agree there's a place for old slow low power systems but personally i think some ambition for both low power (at low usage) and ability to scale up on demamd just makes sense & is to be expected. For a price, and not a vast one.
If you're doing a custom case and don't limit your imagination, you can use one of the many netbook or laptop motherboards. Downside is they're limited to 1-2 mPCIe slots, on the other hand they also have 1-2 SATA ports so you can easily connect decent storage. Plus USB and video ports.
Some boards have stupid whitelists for the mPCIe slots, so a bit of research is desirable. Or just steer clear of HP/Dell/Lenovo.
Low power netbook chips can be passively cooled, and power bricks and connectors aren't as much of a problem as you'd think.
They can be had for as low as $10 on eBay since barely anyone buys them. Kind of a shame.
I used to travel with our sales people when they had to do demoes. Even with internet, they'd bring a small desktop computer, a monitor, a WiFi router, a bag of Ethernet cables, all assorted keyboard and mouse paraphernalia all in its very own carry on bag.
Needless to say, we always planned for extra time at security...
I'm sure no one will ask them to show UL or CE marks or want Homologation approvals. You just whip out the old ISO 9000 certificates and tell the customs official that its all good "look its OpenWRT from Github - definitely not a Stingray officer!" LoL.
Partially related: I have two older WRAP boards by the same manufacturer which served me well in the past but today are too old and slow to be used for packet filtering (AMD Geode x86 CPU, 128MB RAM). I think they could be of use in other contexts, once provided with a more suitable OS; what would you recommend to keep them in use in embedded related applications where security is not a concern, that is, reading from sensors in local networks, hosting very simple services, etc? They're well built and still low power (5 Watts or less) and would deserve some more years of life.
I imagine the Docker situation might be better, 3 years on.
Heck, there are even some arm-based retail routers shipping with docker support these days. (Well, in China at least...)
Although I imagine one would have to choose between connecting their external drive or their MWAN card in that situation. (Or bring a usb hub)
Assuming you can get OpenWrt or similar running. (Which more often than not ends up being the hard part on some of these new chipsets. Hello Qualcomm.)
I love OpenWRt and use it every day as my work router on my desk, buuut this? I think what you really wanted is a laptop with antennas :D
I consider the Huawei E5770 a travel router as its an lte modem and wifi repeater that also comes with its own battery pack and gives me everything i need, short of a server ;)
