Hardware

I wanted to build a fanless monowall build and after much research the below components are what I went with.  I did not find any mention of the Intel BOXD525MW Intel Atom D525 on this forum so thought I would post if anyone else was looking at building something equivalent.  Yes, I understand most of these specs are way overboard for a monowall box but I figured if I wanted to ever turn this system into an extra PC or something these specs would make do for that.

I had some issues with the sata to cf adapter, SYBA SD-ADA50024.  Took me three compact flash cards to find one that would boot from the device.  After research I found that this is typical with many adapters as you have to find a compact flash card that is bootable and meets certain specifications and since most compact flash cards do not provide the exact specifications on the outside of them it took me many tries to find one that worked.

Overall, the system is running smoothly.  Temperatures on the CPU and inside the case are appropriate (I do not have a case fan.)  Monowall 1.33 installed without issue and I was able to assign network interfaces to both the Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller (this is the Realtek 8111E which is on the Intel BOXD525MW motherboard/cpu) and Intel 82557 Pro/100 Ethernet (just an extra Intel PCI NIC I had lying around, most of the Intel Pro desktop adapters work in monowall so for those that are unsure just browse the forum/web and make sure whatever version of monowall you will be using (and thus whatever version of freebsd) supports the particular Intel drivers.)  A good link is http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.0R/hardware-i386.html#ETHERNET for monowall 1.3x as that version of monowall is based on FreeBSD 6 and that link will tell you which NIC drivers are included.  You'll notice I do not have a cd drive in the system.  I had to boot from CD (cdrom version of 1.33) and used Option 7 to install to the compact flash card.  Once I did so I disconnected the cd drive and now booting directly from the compact flash card.

If the SATA to compact flash adapter didn't work I had a 256 MB USB key that I could have used to boot monowall from (motherboard supports USB boot and monowall worked perfectly booting from the USB key.)  I use it as my backup in case something does happen to the compact flash card and/or sata to cf adapter.

Hopefully this helps someone browsing the forum that wants to do something similar.

Cheers!

APEX MI-008 Black Steel Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case 250W Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811154091

Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model KVR1333D3S9/2G
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139049

SYBA SD-ADA50024 2.5" SATA/USB To Compact Flash Adapter
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186099

Intel BOXD525MW Intel Atom D525@ 1.8GHz (Dual Core) BGA559 Intel NM10 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121442

Rosewill RX-C200 2.5” SSD / HDD Aluminum Mounting Kit for 3.5" Drive Bay
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817997010