Router part list suggestions

I am thinking of making a low power PC for a firewall/router, etc. Let me know if anyone has experience or can say anything about these parts:

JetWay J7F4K1G5D-PB - Low power VIA C7 Processor, dual gigabit lan, some crappy video card. (25 watts!) - $129.99

Samsung 18GB SSD - $199.99

CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB DDR2 667 - 29.99

Morex Cubid 3688 - $72.99

Samsung Slim DVD+/-R - $54.99

2.5 to 3.5" IDE Converter - $5.99

Does this look like everything I would need? What type of cable do I need to connect the DVD drive to the motherboard?

I was planning on putting Clark Connect or some other free firewall software on there. does anyone have experience with doing something similar?

A standalone, manageable vpn firewall would be easier (and probably cheaper, too) than building a whole system for such a task. But, if you must build... let us know how it goes!

ilikecake said:

What type of cable do I need to connect the DVD drive to the motherboard?

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You'll need a slim ATAPI to IDE/ATAPI adapter, along with an IDE cable. Here's one:
http://www.directron.com/cddvdadapter.html

HOWEVER, the case you chose already comes with one, along with the 2.5" to 3.5" adapter:

The Morex Cubid 3688 is supplied with a stand to allow vertical mounting, a slimline CD adapter, a custom IDE cable with 2.5" hard drive adapter fitted, and various fixing screws. The Morex Cubid 3688 front panel has two USB ports, a power switch, reset switch and indicator lights for hard drive activity and power.

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ilikecake said:

Samsung 18GB SSD - $199.99

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I'd ditch the SSD for now, since its so damn expensive, lol. Just pickup any standard laptop drive for much less... I doubt the router/firewall would need such fast storage as an SSD.

Sounds like a fun little project, I would probably shy away from the SSD as well, I don't think you will really benefit that much from having it, and a standard laptop drive would cut a lot off your total build cost.

Many router/firewall distros can boot off a CD and using a CF-IDE adapter, just store config data there. This is common with both m0n0wall and pfSense, not sure about clarkconnect
One thing I'd be sure to investigate is the onboard NICs. They look to be realtek, which aren't held in high regard for performance applications. I've built a pfSense box before, and they basically tell you that if you're using realtek NICs, you might as well just scrap the whole project right there. This would be doublely true given the very little amount of CPU resources you have. Dual port gigabit LAN cards are cheap, and 10/100 even cheaper

Thanks for the replies. The SSD is pretty expensive. I mainly wanted it for low power consumption, but maybe I will just go with a small laptop HD or a CF to IDE adapter or something. Or maybe something like this.

About the NICs they are based on the Realtek RTL8110SC chip. I have been looking around, to see what I can find about these. I have seen that they are usable with clarkconnect, but I have not seen anything about their performance. Is there anywhere in particular that I could look for that sort of thing?