Skip to content

Recommended Hardware

Jump to bottom
Lucas Holt edited this page Jul 18, 2025 · 21 revisions

Users often ask what hardware is recommended for MidnightBSD. Since this information changes frequently, it's challenging to give updated results. Here is a list of hardware that works or partially works on MidnightBSD.

Other products may work fine, but we don't have data.

CPUs

(note: does not indicate integrated graphics support)

  • AMD Phenom, Phenom II, FX series (bulldozer), Ryzen (zen, zen+, zen2, zen3, zen4), epyc 4004
  • AMD Opteron CPUs
  • Intel Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs (sandybridge through 14th gen raptor lake refresh)
  • Intel Core / Core 2 DUO
  • Intel Pentium D
  • Intel Xeon e3/e5/e7 CPUs
  • Intel Xeon Scalable (1st - 3rd gen)

Untested by likely work:

  • AMD Epyc / Threadripper CPUs based on Zen 2/3/4 up to 64 cores.

Disk Recommendations

Hard Drives

Seagate, Toshiba, or HGST drives are fine for conventional boot hard drives.

We currently recommend Seagate IronWolf or Exos drives for ZFS or RAID configurations. If you choose WD Red, be sure it's one of the CMR models.

Known working drive models

  • Seagate Exos X14 ST12000NM0538 12TB 3.5" LFF 6Gbps 7.2K RPM FastFormat 512e Enterprise SATA Hard Disk Drives
  • Seagate ST8000VN004 8TB IronWolf 3.5 HDD SATA 6GB

Solid State Drives

  • Samsung
  • Intel
  • Sandisk
  • Toshiba
  • ADATA
  • Crucial/Micron

All of these work well for desktop workloads. For servers, it's better to get Samsung, Micron or Solidigm/Intel enterprise drives. If you must use consumer SSDs, use Intel Optane or Samsung drives if possible for these workloads.

  • Intel Optane 900P / 905P
  • Samsung 980 PRO
  • Samsung 970 PRO
  • Samsung 870 EVO
  • Samsung 750 EVO
  • Samsung 860 Pro
  • Samsung 860 EVO
  • Samsung 860 QVO
  • SAMSUNG 830
  • ADATA SX6000NP m.2 NVMe (must be running MidnightBSD 1.1 or higher)
  • Toshiba THNSNJ128GCSU
  • Seagate Firecuda SSDs
  • Seagate IronWolf 125
  • Sandisk
  • INTEL SSDSC2KG480G8
  • Crucial CT500P3SSD8
  • 1TB Western Digital 1TB SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen3 PCIe, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 3,470 MB/s - WDS100T3X0C

Avoid WD Black SN770 / SN770se SSDs. Several users have reported issues with burst reads. This is also an issue on FreeBSD with an open bug https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=262969. Also, see https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793

Video Cards (desktop)

See nvidia GPUs

See AMD GPUs

Wired NIC

Generally, we recommend Intel networking equipment.

  • Intel Ethernet Controller 10-Gigabit X540-AT2
  • Intel X550 nbase-T
  • Intel 1000/Pro series
  • Realtek 8211/8168/8411
  • Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM57810 10 Gigabit Ethernet

WiFi

Most 802.11ac devices and newer are not currently supported.

  • Belkin F7D1101 v1 basic wireless adapter
  • TP-Link USB Wifi Adapter for PC N150 Wireless TL-WN725N

Motherboard Chipsets

Motherboards

Sound Cards and Audio devices

  • Most onboard audio with Realtek chipsets
  • Sound Blaster Audigy
  • Logitech headsets
  • Steel Series USB Audio DAC + Pro headset
  • Built-in audio on NVIDIA GTX 1080ti with nvidia driver installed NOTE: creative labs audio generally does not work. Any SoundBlaster after the original Audigy series is likely not to work.
  • Behringer U-Control UCA202 USB Audio Interface
  • FiiO E10K (OLYMPUS2) Type-C USB DAC

Keyboards

  • Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Stealth 2014 Edition Elite Mechanical Gaming Keyboard.
  • Logitech Keyboard K120
  • Corsair K63, K68, K70 Lux (will not work with old MidnightBSD releases older than 1.0) In general, corsair keyboards need special patches with the USB stack to work. If you get a newer model that doesn't work, please provide USB ids and we can get them added. WARNING: updated firmware for these models will break compatibility entirely! Do not update with icue!
  • Steel Series Apex 3 / Apex 5
  • Glorious GMMK2
  • Any standards-compliant keyboard.

Webcam

  • Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920

Laptops

  • Lenovo Thinkpad A485—works with a loader.conf workaround. Video is not accelerated. Audio works, but the sound mixer is unreliable. Display dimming is not working. Onboard WiFi does not work. Onboard NIC does work.
  • ASUS Laptop X200MA-US01T Intel Celeron N2815
  • IBM Thinkpad T430
  • Toshiba AMD A4 Satellite models (needs backlight adjust fix)

Servers

  • HPE gen8 - gen10: iLO works, but there are no HPE agents for *BSD.
  • HPE DL360 gen9
  • HPE DL20 gen 9
  • HPE microserver 10 plus
  • Supermicro X10SDV-4C-TLN2F (Super Server)

Legacy HP server management tools that may work on early MidnightBSD versions or with compat4x/compat5x https://people.freebsd.org/~jcagle/#health

Clone this wiki locally