Hi there,
i hope i am in the right area…
since I change my Internet to an FTTH connection,
I would like to switch from my FritzBox back to an IPFire …
now I have dug out an old computer with an AMD E-350 processor…
when I run the “Specter Meltdown Checker” i got the message “> STATUS: VULNERABLE (Your CPU doesn’t support SSBD)” at CVE-2018-3639
now my question is …
should or can I use this hardware without major dangers or should I switch to an alternative hardware?
Kind regards.
Erwin
One consideration is processing capacity. The E-350 is dual-core, single-threaded 1.6 GHz and, depending on chipset, might be limited to 4 or 8 GB RAM. Would that be sufficient for your bandwidth and intended processes such as IPS & Clamav ? If not then you would need to investigate a different APU anyway.
I doubt that there is a simple answer to your question regarding vulnerability. In the absence of any first-hand reports, on this forum, for contemporary Intel processors you could not purchase one and be confident that it is less vulnerable than the E-350. The older Intel Core 2 Duo generation certainly weren’t.
I too have an E-350 and Specter Meltdown Checker reports similarly for it. All other AMD APU that I have run the checker on get a satisfactory report for this particular vulnerability:
A-series report “mitigated” - those would be a better solution, for outlay of about USD 150
older Turion series report “not affected”, if you have any of those.
Get a cheap AM4 Athlon and be happy with it.