Looking for a x86 box, the only hard requirement is low power consumption:
4 watts or less while idle, with two ethernet ports (EEE enabled) plugged and lit up at 1Gbit/s rate, no USB devices or display connected.
Consumption is measured on AC side, at the wall outlet.
Given efficiency of semi-decent PSU on low loads, thats around 3 watts budget for the box itself.
Form factor: smaller, the better, anything from cigarette-pack sized to small mini-PC.
Cooling: passive
CPU: x86-x64, anything modern can route 1Gbit/s.
RAM: 2GB or more. SODIMM or soldered, probably LPDDR.
Storage: NVMe M.2 2280 SSD, cold as ice, something with working APST and ASPM, consuming around 0.001W in L1.2 sleep. Speed doesn't really matter.
Ethernet: two 1Gbit/s ports. Again cold and stable with all the EEE and ASPM bells and whistles.
Other: non-butchered BIOS with all the relevant power saving features enabled and working. Couple of USB3 ports. No Wi-Fi.
~5-6 watts (+/- 25%) is reasonable easy to achieve for alderlake-n, N100/ N97/ N150, even with four 2.5 GBit/s ethernet ports.
~4 watts is possible, but you need a good hand at selecting your hardware - and probably look more into the thin-client direction (Atom j4xxx), than what usually counts as router PC (with the corresponding restrictions of 1 GBit/s ethernet and having to bodge in a second 1 GBit/s port (which adds to the power consumption) via the 'wlan' A+E M.2 slot - and further consequences on the SSD size (2240/ 2260)/ type (often M.2-SATA). Not all that much BIOS configurability here.
under 4 watts, it's getting complicated.
Do the number crunching how much of a difference aiming for the last half watt really makes…
Even assuming 0.40 EUR/ kWh and an average idle power consumption of:
3 watts, ~26.28 kWh/ year, ~10.51 EUR/ year
4 watts, ~35.04 kWh/ year, ~14.02 EUR/ year
5 watts, ~43.80 kWh/ year, ~17.52 EUR/ year
6 watts, ~52.56 kWh/ year, ~21.02 EUR/ year
7 watts, ~61.32 kWh/ year, ~24.53 EUR/ year
8 watts, ~70.08 kWh/ year, ~28.03 EUR/ year
Both your switch and AP will usually need more than that, on top.
Reading about these noname aliexpress style miniPC/routers doesn’t inspire much confidence, a lot of corner cutting there: ASPM disabled and hidden in BIOS, same for CPU C-states, no BIOS updates or meaningful support, random bottom-of-the-bin SSD and RAM modules, atrocious PSUs, cooling issues due to lousy heatsink tolerances, list goes on…
I mean, that noname box itself will probably run semi-stable, but far from efficient, due to engineering laziness.
It’s not all about electricity cost, I need to throw this router in tight enclosed space with pretty much no ventilation. So size and idle consumption matters.
It’s not a rocket science really, smartphone market got idle consumption solved for like 10 years already.
Ancient D-Link unmanaged 5-port gigabit switch from year 2013 consumes 1W at the wall, with two ports up and EEE enabled. I’d guess there are much more efficient options available right now.
WiFi AP’s are located elsewhere, so not a subject to power restrictions.
Those AMD Jaguar cores are something I would skip in 2025 (based on my experience with the GX-212JC, albeit for a different use case), that's getting very long in the tooth.
My 10 year old x86_64/ j1900 router (and a modern N100 would halve that) only needs a third of the idle power of my ~1 year old ARMv8 wifi router used as AP.
x86 market stagnated at 8th gen causing the minipc market to turn to crap.
ASUS ExpertCenter PN43. Fanless, dual realtek 2.5G (so ASPM works until intel 2.5G), not China no-name brand, has a return policy, etc. I would expect idle to still be 8-9w.
Unfortunately reality of our days is that any non-x86_64 device is ultimately nothing but an appliance, be it smartphone or router, or something else. Destined to e-waste sooner or later, because of software fragmentation. Wake me up when there is a standard way to boot generic OS distribution on ARM or Risc-V or whatever.
Raspberry PI is probably the only semi-exception, supported by several generic distributions, but benefit-cost ratio just isn’t there for RPIs.
For Wi-Fi yeah, there isn’t much alternative to OpenWRT on filogic boxes at the moment, mostly due to other chipsets having crap open source drivers.
Which are the same or worse than 8th gen while somehow consuming the same power at idle. x86 mini pcs should be less than 1w idle at the wall by now, not 10w. Intel might have a solution by 2028.
Link to a German PC builder forum. There is a google sheet link right in the first post of that thread with a long list of devices of very low power servers of forum members incl. power consumption.
Good choice for very low power consumption is out of stock older 8-12 gen intel (and not recent chiplet or E core designs) and especially office thin client custom boards, Fujitsu and Asrock mainboards (from a personal experience be warned: Fujitsu mainboards are more costly mostly have reduced BIOS options or rather weird hardware configs or proprietary connectors and Asrock BIOS programmers tend to struggle with quality)
Extremely slow (2* 1.2 GHz, old AMD Jaguar cores), not anything you should buy in 2025^w 2026, 12+ year old technology (yes I know, GX-212JJ as a CPU isn't quite that old on paper, the cores it is using are, though - this is just a rehash to supply pin compatible CPUs for old embedded designs).
If you want to go AMD, there's the ryzen embedded r1505g (the whole ryzen embedded r1xxxg range) - nice and capable CPU, but running hotter and more power hungry (~8 watts idle for the complete system), much faster than the AMD G-series/ Jaguar cores. But the Intel j4xxx series isn't that much slower, but can get away with 3.5 watts idle (again, whole system on the 230 V AC mains socket).
Either way, the AMD G-series/ Jaguar cores really aren't competitive anymore - yes, they can be low power, but they're also dog slow and in no way comptetitive against the Intel j4xxx (I'm not dismissing the ryzen embedded 1xxxg either, but those need twice the electricity).
Have you tried any of the above recently?
j4105/ j4125, cool.
r1505g, yay.
GX-212JC, just don't.
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The GX-212JC should be a valid stand-in comparison for the GX-212JJ - and the GX-215JJ is just clocked 300 MHz higher, negligible.
But that would be overkill. We are talking about old stuff in here. In which the 215JJ is kinda beating those intel useless chips :D. Indeed, Jaguar cores in 2025 isnt competitive anymore, but neither those intel chips. Excavator in the other hands, interestingly, still ok.
I have serious doubts about these power consumption numbers. Also the OP wants dual NICs at below 4w.
None of these chips are competitive because there is zero competition in the minipc segment for quite some time. N100/N300 is almost three years old now.
Still not worth the time, effort, or premium these days when you can just buy a SFF 8th gen office pc that has a platinum PSU for $50-$80 which idles at 5-8w + NIC.
Idle consumption sucks though, 6 watts at the wall with stock RPi PSU, whole thing heats up to 50C passively cooled in closed space.
ASPM seems to be disabled and SATA SSD probaly isn’t sleeping right on that USB3-SATA bridge.
Market situation is rather sad though, Intel got caught with their trousers down, and AMD never really cared about idle consumption anyway it seems.
