I do agree, OpenWRT on x64 X86 can be considered future-proof.
My network shelf is simply too small to accommodate another PC. I used to run my PCs full time in the past but I moved to dedicated NAS and two Raspberry Pi for 24x7 applications.
It would be simply too hot (just considering heat created by PC).
There are mini PCs that are smaller than a typical consumer router and use ~ 10-15 watts.
For example a higher end one here
ODROID H2, ~13 cm cube, well under 10 W idle, with J4105, dual NICs, and built with dual, mirrored SSDs. Shorter cases available if you don't need the dual SSDs (~6 cm tall).
I was not aware those mini-PCs become so cheap. Still, Ubiquity ER-4 ($170USD) router is half the price of this miniPC - it is the price range of Turris Omnia router.
ER-4 is not going to give you anywhere near gigabit performance with SQM. The ODROID H2 Jeff mentions is $149 on amazon at the moment, with power supply and some kind of case it will be less than $200. That's a much better choice in my opinion for long-term gigabit WAN usage.
EDIT: not everyone needs QoS btw, but I have found it useful on my gigabit link in order to keep VOIP calls from stuttering and games from lagging.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/DFI-DT122-BE-2nd-Gen-AMD-Embedded-R-Series-Industrial-Desktop-Box-PC-2-7GHz-HD/292559997917 might be of interest since it's within the same price range.
The H2 from amazon would appear to be a bit of a burn, if you are in the US ameridroid would be a better option. But don't forget you have to throw a SODIMM (or two) at it, and maybe a SSD, but eMMC would probably suffice if target use is just a router.
the h2 and another x86 small form(celeron n4000) box i have have realtek nics and cannot break 100mbit on trunk(18.06 seems to be fine) I don't know if its just me, seems to be good info to have speaking about 1000Mbit
I've got an ODRIOD H2 that is "next up" on my test bench. Performance seems good on Debian 10 ("Buster") which is a 4.19-branch kernel. I'll hopefully be able to be more definitive on its performance in the next few days.
(x64-X86)
Seems to be a lot of disagreement online between using a switch or dedicated network cards for each device?
I would say, probably both. There should be one unique port for the WAN and LAN facing side of a router (can be two NICs or a single NIC with two ports). Then connect a switch to the LAN side to allow multiple concurrent wired connections to the router. If you want to (heavily) use VLANs to structure the internal network a managed switch will be required.
What does that have to do with what i posted?
Some people are using dedicated network cards for Lan devices instead of switch.
Sure, could be driven by what they have available or by the bandwidth/cabling requirements.
Using one port on the router per LAN device will give you dedicated bandwidth from each device to the router's CPU, but it will also make all direct connections between LAN ports require CPU processing (which is a non issue if you actually should want to isolate the LAN ports). IMHO using dedicated ports will also allow you to skip using VLAN as long as you only need a few separated segments.
If you expect much traffic between the LAN nodes and comparatively little between the LAN nodes and the router/WAN, you are probably better/cheaper off with letting a switch handle aggregating the LAN devices (you could use a 2.5/5/10 Gbps NIC in the router and use a switch with a 2.5/5/10 Gbps port if total bandwidth becomes an issue).
If you require many LAN ports the dedicated port on the router option becomes first pricey (multi port NICs) and then extremely pricy (mainboards with sufficient PCIe lanes) and then impossible. Especially given that most likely the CPU will need to touch/handle each individual packet, the more NICs the more CPU cycles will be required.
For the kind of network sizes I see with friends and family both options seem viable (most users simply connect via WLAN, demonstrating they value convenience over bandwidth anyway).
So as so often, I guess, this is about personal policy and goals...
Well, in the extreme you could have a single NIC port on the router and use VLANs and a managed switch to multiplex WAN and LAN traffic over this single port. This is possible and a number of all in one routers actually do this; it also seems sub-optimal, so I wanted to emphasize that a router should have >= 2 ports. Which seems on-topic to me.
Again i have absolutely no idea what you're talking about because people use cards instead of a switch to reduce buffer and CPU load with hardware and network FIFO offloading on the network card itself.
On a switch, LAN to LAN traffic does not even register with the main CPU at all (so zero CPU cycles), with dedicated NICs you would need direct DMA from one NIC to another NIC's memory to avoid processing by the CPU. And even if direct DMA is used to avoid the CPU then this is still going to eat into the available memory bandwidth and might have side effects the CPU can experience.
Also what is "network FIFO offloading"?
Could you please elaborate what the linked post is demonstrating in your opinion?
Searching there for either buffer, offload, or FIFO comes out empty. (Note that around minute 4:40 the builder tells the audience that he will place the device in top of his network switch, so this seems more an example of both, multiple ports on the "router" and dedicated L2 switching, pretty much what I described, no?).
So in your opinion you prefer a switch , i on the other hand don't have an opinion as i have never built a router!
I was just bringing up the subject for consideration for those that have posted in this thread an interest in building their own router as something they may wish to explore for the pros and cons.
There is a lot of noise going around on Realtek NICs. Yes, in the past (years ago) there were issues with performance and poor drivers. But those issues have been solved long time ago. Currently I have a Odroid H2 as a router with OPNsense and there are no (performance) issues / limitations at all. If this is still an issue in OpenWrt the drivers should be updated.
They're still quite unreliable and have some fun quirks, you can look the driver source code for FreeBSD 