10gb PCIe nic

[rp2000]

I'm thinking of trying out a 10gb fibre service for a few months and needed a recommendation for a card to install in my PC to connect the new service to and get maximum speed.

Just wondering what folks here have in their PCs, for something that works well and doesn't break the bank. The actual internet speed is gonna be around 8gbps so It doesn't have to be too high performance.

I had a look at the TP-Link TX401 which costs about 70 euros. It will go in a PCIe 4 slot X4, for reference.


rp2000

 

[Rainmaker]

I assume you're looking at YouFibre or similar? The TP-Link TX401 uses a Marvell AQC107 chipset. Personally I'd suggest looking on eBay for server pull Intel X550 cards at a similar price. They'll be more reliable, have more offloads and be better supported across platforms. If you only need 10G negotiation (not 5G or 2.5G) then the X540 will be half the price again (about £35-40), but the x550 is newer and better if you have a x4 slot available.

 

[rp2000]

I assume you're looking at YouFibre or similar? The TP-Link TX401 uses a Marvell AQC107 chipset. Personally I'd suggest looking on eBay for server pull Intel X550 cards at a similar price. They'll be more reliable, have more offloads and be better supported across platforms. If you only need 10G negotiation (not 5G or 2.5G) then the X540 will be half the price again (about £35-40), but the x550 is newer and better if you have a x4 slot available.

The service is in Spain. FTTH 10GBe, but as I mentioned it will only hit about 8GBps up and down (I've seen the speedtests of other people on that ISP), but technically I need the 10GB negotiation only, as it will just go directly to the single 10GB port on the ISP router.

I did see some of these X540 chipset ones cheap, and X550 are obviously newer and pricier. I will double check and see if I can find any at a reasonable price. I'd prefer to just get something brand new rather than second hand.

It will go in one of the 2 large PCIe 4.0 slots in the photo below, and the NVME in it will move to the slower spare PCIe 3.0 x 1 slot. Everything is half height cards.

rp2000

 

[Rainmaker]

Sorry, I missed the '€' sign. You'd be buying an inferior card to get new at the same money - the Intel cards are vastly superior for latency, stability, offload capabilities and driver support. Do you really only need a single device plugging in? You'd be better placed running your own router, or at least your own switch. That opens the possibility of running fibre on the LAN (or DAC), meaning you could grab a ConnectX-4 LX 10/25G card for buttons and have a far superior experience. If you just want fast, plug and play I'd go Intel. If you want to do it 'properly' with room for expansion I'd grab a cheap Mikrotik SFP+ switch like the CRS305-1G-4S+in and connect via DAC from a CX-4LX. Both are available with half height brackets and both will sit happily in a PCIe 4 slot.

 

[rp2000]

Sorry, I missed the '€' sign. You'd be buying an inferior card to get new at the same money - the Intel cards are vastly superior for latency, stability, offload capabilities and driver support. Do you really only need a single device plugging in? You'd be better placed running your own router, or at least your own switch. That opens the possibility of running fibre on the LAN (or DAC), meaning you could grab a ConnectX-4 LX 10/25G card for buttons and have a far superior experience. If you just want fast, plug and play I'd go Intel. If you want to do it 'properly' with room for expansion I'd grab a cheap Mikrotik SFP+ switch like the CRS305-1G-4S+in and connect via DAC from a CX-4LX. Both are available with half height brackets and both will sit happily in a PCIe 4 slot.

Literally a single device! I only own 1 pc and the other devices in my wired network are just a TV, PS5, and Unifi wifi device which are all 1Gb!

The PC itself is not that fancy either, as you can see from the photo! Pre built Low power-ish Lenovo desktop.

I had a quick look on ebay for x550 and tbh all of the ones I see are around 100 euros+ and are the dual nic versions, a lot sent from china. I'll keep looking as I've had many intel NICs in the past and they are rock solid.


rp2000

 

[aaronyuri]

Rainmaker has covered this off pretty well. Used server grade NICs will be the right play for 10GbE at home.

You should be able to find some cheap, even if you need to look at SFP cards and get an Ethernet transceiver. Look for certain chipsets (like ConnectX-4 - fantastic cards) that are branded by OEMs like HPE or Dell with their own models. You get the same thing underneath, just a different logo on the sticker. HPE 640FLR is an HPE example of the 10/25 CX-4.

 

[rp2000]

I will probably get this for 56 euros, has the older Intel chipset in it:

GLOTRENDS ST7215 1 Port 10Gb RJ45 Ethernet Network Card with Intel X540 Controller, PCIE 2.0 X8 Interface



rp2000

 

[On Holiday]

eBay is absolutely flooded with either fake and overpriced X540 NICs

Have a look for "AOC-STG-I2T", usually around £20-25 here in the UK.

The fan-less ones are less prone to being fake, and have more longevity - the fans are pretty much the only failure point.

 

[rp2000]

eBay is absolutely flooded with either fake and overpriced X540 NICs

Have a look for "AOC-STG-I2T", usually around £20-25 here in the UK.

The fan-less ones are less prone to being fake, and have more longevity - the fans are pretty much the only failure point.

The Glotrends one is from Amazon, and I trust the brand, as they also make the 3 PCIe NVME adaptor cards that are in my photo!

The one you referenced is still cheaper though (about 40 euros after a quick search), but I can only find it shipped from China. It has 2 ports, which I don't need, but if I can find a reseller locally then I'll get it, just for the price saving over the Glotrends one!


rp2000

 

[sandys]

What sort of machine are they going in, if its a normal desktop, an x8 card is going to rob your GPU of 8 lanes of PCIe typically, you may not want this, depends on what you do with your PC.

You may be better served with a later PCi gen x4 card, though it is fair to say I ran the 8x Intel dual nic in an x4 slot with no 10G performance issues in my use, well apart from when it overheated and would drop to 1gb but that's another issues.

I've had no issues with Aqtion cards personally either 107 or 113 apart from some support in linux a few years back on some NAS distros so I went Intel for my NAS but in my windows machine they do the job.

 

[rp2000]

What sort of machine are they going in, if its a normal desktop, an x8 card is going to rob your GPU of 8 lanes of PCIe typically, you may not want this, depends on what you do with your PC.

You may be better served with a later PCi gen x4 card, though it is fair to say I ran the 8x Intel dual nic in an x4 slot with no 10G performance issues in my use, well apart from when it overheated and would drop to 1gb but that's another issues.

I've had no issues with Aqtion cards personally either 107 or 113 apart from some support in linux a few years back on some NAS distros so I went Intel for my NAS but in my windows machine they do the job.

Nothing fancy

PSREF

Lenovo Product Specifications Reference

psref.lenovo.com

The other PCIe slots are used to add extra NVME drives so I have 5 NVME and 2 SATA ssds in total for storage. CPU is i5-12600 with Intel HD 770 and 32GB RAM. More than sufficient for downloading files and hosting a Plex server. No Gaming or photos/videos etc. I generally never hear the fans and the whole thing uses about 12w at idle and about 25w when viewing content. So I want to keep the whole solution of adding a 10gb NIC low power/noise/cpu etc.

The internet service is 10GB, but the max speeds you get are 8GB so I would not even be maxing out the NIC throughput, thus avoiding any overheating. I'm really just after the cheapest solution, as if I don't like the 10Gb service, I can swap back to a 1Gb service after 3 months (and I'd probably just go back to using my built in 1gb NIC as I have been doing up till now). The price of the 10GB service is 26 Euros a month, so it seems silly to spend a fortune on a network card in my scenario, if I only keep the whole thing for 3 months.


rp2000

 

[Meddling-Monk]

I have systems using their onboard Marvell AQtion (AQC113) chipsets running the onboard 10g RJ45s and no problems getting full speeds from them.

I also have a *ahem* NICGIGA PCIe 3.0 x4 card (also using a Marvell AQuantia? 103 or 107 chipset) and can chuck 1GB+ (9gb/s roughly) of data up and down the ethernet network to the other systems. This card is in an old i5 3570(non-k) system, so pretty much so long as there are no other issues not related to compatibility, the hardware of the system shouldn't make much difference to how fast it works (so long as PCIe slots aren't being taken from another, etc).

However, I am aware that some users have had poor experiences with the cards, but I've not dug into why they ran into issues, so can't say if you're likely to run into the same issue or not.

Personally, I initially went with the Marvell options because they were multi-gigabit capable, and I wasn't certain if the network hardlines I put in were capable of handling it or if I missed any of it up. And of course, they were cheaper "new" compared to the Intel cards, which were 10g only, meaning if my network wasn't up to scratch, I just purchased cards that wasn't able to communicate because the highway (my cat6 hardlines) were not suitable. So this would have been a "safer" and "cheaper" option for me whilst keeping extra work to a minimum (because being an unpaid carer means you virtually have no spare time to do anything else like rewiring the place up properly again). Personally glad my situation worked out well for me.

And wow, only 25 Euros for 10gb/s service? I'm haggling right now to get £39 for 5gb/s...

 

[sandys]

Considering the light use of 10G and your small systems low power file system requirements, a combo 10G M2 card might be a consideration, slightly more outlay @ ~£100 but you can up your server storage by 2x M2 and get 10G net access in one card, as long as you understand the limitations of bandwidtn limits you would get on those M2s, still faster that Sata SSDs. I run 4x 4 lane M2s in an 8x slot with similar bandwidth sharing deal with a QNAP card, its great for adding extra low power, quiet storage and as I can only get on and off my server at 20Gb the limitation never bothers me as it would do that even if I smashed all 4 running stuff internally.

adding 10g might double your power

 

[rp2000]

Considering the light use of 10G and your small systems low power file system requirements, a combo 10G M2 card might be a consideration, slightly more outlay @ ~£100 but you can up your server storage by 2x M2 and get 10G net access in one card, as long as you understand the limitations of bandwidtn limits you would get on those M2s, still faster that Sata SSDs. I run 4x 4 lane M2s in an 8x slot with similar bandwidth sharing deal with a QNAP card, its great for adding extra low power, quiet storage and as I can only get on and off my server at 20Gb the limitation never bothers me as it would do that even if I smashed all 4 running stuff internally.

adding 10g might double your power

I have looked at these qnap add-on cards soooooo many times, they look like such a cool idea that almost no-one else is doing! No problem about reduced bandwidth on some of the NVMEs, that already happens with the WSSN350X that's sitting in a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot!

My next plan was to get a Glotrends PA20 (dual NVME with PCI Bifurification), but if I saw a QNAP combo card for around that price I would snap it up! What model do you have? I was looking at https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/product/qm2-2p10g1tb/specs/hardware

The fans on them could be an issue, although they look easy enough to disconnect and the NVME would probably not run at full speed anyway and need the extra cooling.


rp2000

 

[rp2000]

And wow, only 25 Euros for 10gb/s service? I'm haggling right now to get £39 for 5gb/s...

https://www.digimobil.es/combina-telefonia-internet

I will pay 1 euro extra a month to get a non CG-NAT IP though so 26.

If I don't like it I will save 5 Euros and drop to the 1GBps service. I currently pay 30 euros for 1GBps with another ISP, but I can't say no to those types of monthly savings! Fibre and Mobile services are really cheap in Spain.


rp2000

 

[sandys]

I have looked at these qnap add-on cards soooooo many times, they look like such a cool idea that almost no-one else is doing! No problem about reduced bandwidth on some of the NVMEs, that already happens with the WSSN350X that's sitting in a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot!

My next plan was to get a Glotrends PA20 (dual NVME with PCI Bifurification), but if I saw a QNAP combo card for around that price I would snap it up! What model do you have? I was looking at https://www.qnap.com/en-uk/product/qm2-2p10g1tb/specs/hardware

The fans on them could be an issue, although they look easy enough to disconnect and the NVME would probably not run at full speed anyway and need the extra cooling.

I use this https://www.qnap.com/en/product/qm2-4p-384 just for drives I have dual 10G NICs on my NAS mobo so don't need the other combo, this works well

This Qnap card will work without PCI-e bifurcation as it has a mux switch and in testing on some old 1Tb drives before putting in NAS a few years ago there is very little impact in performance, clearly if you raided all 4 you would saturate a PCIe3 x8 slot but its not slow.

With respect to the combo card I was thinking of a chinese special from Xikestor, SKN-2BT-M2, dual 10G Aqtion113 and dual M2, there will be screams from the Networking guys here

On the QNAP single performance of 1 of my drives ( 3 shown, not top left that is 2x 512Mb striped in windows software) fans are quiet.

If I fire off all four of the 1Tb drives obviously there is a knock on effect but you know it is still not slow.

 

[Rainmaker]

I have systems using their onboard Marvell AQtion (AQC113) chipsets running the onboard 10g RJ45s and no problems getting full speeds from them.

I also have a *ahem* NICGIGA PCIe 3.0 x4 card (also using a Marvell AQuantia? 103 or 107 chipset) and can chuck 1GB+ (9gb/s roughly) of data up and down the ethernet network to the other systems. This card is in an old i5 3570(non-k) system, so pretty much so long as there are no other issues not related to compatibility, the hardware of the system shouldn't make much difference to how fast it works (so long as PCIe slots aren't being taken from another, etc).

However, I am aware that some users have had poor experiences with the cards, but I've not dug into why they ran into issues, so can't say if you're likely to run into the same issue or not.

Personally, I initially went with the Marvell options because they were multi-gigabit capable, and I wasn't certain if the network hardlines I put in were capable of handling it or if I missed any of it up. And of course, they were cheaper "new" compared to the Intel cards, which were 10g only, meaning if my network wasn't up to scratch, I just purchased cards that wasn't able to communicate because the highway (my cat6 hardlines) were not suitable. So this would have been a "safer" and "cheaper" option for me whilst keeping extra work to a minimum (because being an unpaid carer means you virtually have no spare time to do anything else like rewiring the place up properly again). Personally glad my situation worked out well for me.

And wow, only 25 Euros for 10gb/s service? I'm haggling right now to get £39 for 5gb/s...

Linux or *BSD? Both server OS have solid, battle-tested Intel and ConnectX driver support but Marvell has traditionally lagged. Since the Marvell/Aquantia chipset also lacks a ton of offloads compared to the other two, and they're available at a similar price, it's a no-brainer for a proper server setup. While I'm sure Marvell/Aquantia does the job for a basic home system or desktop, it's more in line with Realtek stuff than 'real' NICs for heavy lifting and server work. IOMMU, SR-IOV, offloads for tc/flowtable/conntrack/dpdk/vpp, etc are all leagues ahead on Intel/Mellanox - if they're present on the Marvell chipset at all.

 

[hawker1986]

Just to throw a spanner in the works I actually bought two of the TX401s and they work a treat crossed over between my home server and PC. I’m sure everyone else is right regarding intel ones being better but I’ve been really happy with the TP-Link ones had no problems and achieving full 10GB transfer speeds

 

[rp2000]

Just to throw a spanner in the works I actually bought two of the TX401s and they work a treat crossed over between my home server and PC. I’m sure everyone else is right regarding intel ones being better but I’ve been really happy with the TP-Link ones had no problems and achieving full 10GB transfer speeds

Many thanks. I'm gonna get one of the ones with the marvell chipset. It's newer and supports 2.5/5/10gb speeds and uses less power. I read a lot of reports the intel ones run hot and use a lot of power, which makes sense as they are quite old.


rp2000

 

[rp2000]

I read that Realtek have some new chipsets that have just come out that do 10GB at really low power. Not much info as they are new, but I ordered one on a punt for 32 euros from china.
Even lower power draw than the Marvell ones, and about 10 times less than the Intel ones!

Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE network adapter is coming to motherboards later this year

Finally, some affordable 10GbE

www.tomshardware.com

rp2000