Below is the hardware I use for development and home use of my ROCK sensor. It’s an extremely powerful system in a small form factor, under $1000. The most important aspects to me were that I wanted IPMI for baremetal remote management, dual Intel NICs, quiet, and relatively low-power. I sit by this thing and work everyday and don’t want to wear hearing protection while I write code.
The prices reflect what I paid for them in March 2016. No doubt the prices will have changed and newer, better stuff is probably available. Things like RAM and SSDs go on sale all the time, so look for that if you’re a bargain shopper.
- Case
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Antec ISK 300-150 Black Mini-ITX Desktop Computer Case 150 Watt Power Supply - $70.70
- RAM
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CRUCIAL TECHNOLOGY 16GBx2 32GB Kit, DDR4 2133 MT/s DIMM 288 (CT2K16G4DFD8213) - $174.49
- Storage
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SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SATA III 2.5-Inch 7mm Height Solid State Drive (SSD) SDSSDHII-960G-G25 - $199.99
- Motherboard
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ASROCK E3C236D2I server motherboard
- Processor
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Intel® Xeon® Quad-Core CPU E3-1230 v5 @ 3.40GHz (Quad-core)
Newegg MB + CPU Combo deal - $523.69
Total (In March 2016): $968.87
Some routers and firewalls have "port mirroring" options as well. Here’s some budget options. I recommend getting at least a gigabit device if you can afford it. There are much cheaper options for 100M Ethernet.
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Dualcomm DCGS-2005 Gigabit Tap - $169.95