Soldato
How cheap? Intel X520 based cards can be pretty cheap (though not stunningly modern)My SFP+ 10Gb Ethernet card has died
Anyone know of a cheap replacement?
Thanks
Soldato
Soldato
Seeing them for used £40ish with minimal searching here.
New ones for £50 to £60 all over the place too
Soldato
Yeah probably due to the internet providers offering gigabit if you're lucky enough and the dawn of nvme so gigabyte transfer speeds on drives are obtainable.
Soldato
Picked up a Silicom PE310G2I50-T (X550 chipset) for a very good price recently, working very nicely in a PCIe 3 x4 slot. Works as expected with Intel X550 unified chipset drivers.
Did some research a while back and decided on the X550 chipset - lifted from reddit:
The X520 and X710 are SFP+
The X540 and X550 are copper
The x520 and X540 are PCIE 2 (x8 lane)
The X550 and X710 are PCIE 3 (x4 lane)
And borrowed from nikktech:
"However, these controllers are also quite different so whereas the X540 is an x8 lane PCIe V2. 1 controller with a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 5.0GT/s the X550 is a x4 lane PCIe V3. 0 solution that has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 8.0GT/s."
So depends a lot what you want (SFP+ or copper, theoretical max throughput and available slots on your board).
Did some research a while back and decided on the X550 chipset - lifted from reddit:
The X520 and X710 are SFP+
The X540 and X550 are copper
The x520 and X540 are PCIE 2 (x8 lane)
The X550 and X710 are PCIE 3 (x4 lane)
And borrowed from nikktech:
"However, these controllers are also quite different so whereas the X540 is an x8 lane PCIe V2. 1 controller with a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 5.0GT/s the X550 is a x4 lane PCIe V3. 0 solution that has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 8.0GT/s."
So depends a lot what you want (SFP+ or copper, theoretical max throughput and available slots on your board).
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Soldato
Haven't treated myself to new toys in a while so I've just nabbed the following for a NAS upgrade from my trusty Gen8 Microserver.
SilverStone SST-CS381
Supermicro X10SDV-8C+-LN2F (Intel® Xeon® processor D-1541, Single socket FCBGA 1667, 8-Core, 45W)
Sedna - M2 (2280) PCIe M Key to 5 x SATA 6G Adapter Card (to give me a few more SATA ports)
2 x SanDisk SSD PLUS 480 GB (going to play with SSD cache put might just end up being "fast storage")
6 x WD 6TB Red (I have 5 drives already), room later for 2 more discs
600W be quiet! SFX-L PSU
Intel 520 10 GigE NIC (10GBASE-T copper SFP)
16GB DDR4 PC4-19200 2400MH
Cheers
HEADRAT
SilverStone SST-CS381
Supermicro X10SDV-8C+-LN2F (Intel® Xeon® processor D-1541, Single socket FCBGA 1667, 8-Core, 45W)
Sedna - M2 (2280) PCIe M Key to 5 x SATA 6G Adapter Card (to give me a few more SATA ports)
2 x SanDisk SSD PLUS 480 GB (going to play with SSD cache put might just end up being "fast storage")
6 x WD 6TB Red (I have 5 drives already), room later for 2 more discs
600W be quiet! SFX-L PSU
Intel 520 10 GigE NIC (10GBASE-T copper SFP)
16GB DDR4 PC4-19200 2400MH
Cheers
HEADRAT
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Soldato
Nice! Should be an interesting build!
Soldato
Haven't treated myself to new toys in a while so I've just nabbed the following for a NAS upgrade from my trusty Gen8 Microserver.
SilverStone SST-CS381
Supermicro X10SDV-8C+-LN2F (Intel® Xeon® processor D-1541, Single socket FCBGA 1667, 8-Core, 45W)
Sedna - M2 (2280) PCIe M Key to 5 x SATA 6G Adapter Card (to give me a few more SATA ports)
2 x SanDisk SSD PLUS 480 GB (going to play with SSD cache put might just end up being "fast storage")
6 x WD 6TB Red (I have 5 drives already), room later for 2 more discs
600W be quiet! SFX-L PSU
Intel 520 10 GigE NIC (10GBASE-T copper SFP)
16GB DDR4 PC4-19200 2400MH
Cheers
HEADRAT
Never knew you could get a PCIe M Key to 5 x SATA 6G Adapter.
Looking forward to build pics
Soldato
Me neither to earlier this week, looking forward to a see what kinda performance I get out of it, I'm probably going to be putting 5200 rpm discs on it so I think it should be fine
Yep, looking forward to it myself
My journey into 10Gbe has been interesting and can be done amazingly cheap if it suits your setup........
For me, it was how to connect my windows desktop and two unraid servers that live in the loft.
The cheapest way (and covered before) is not to use a switch at all! I used Mellanox ConnectX-2 10Gbe Twin SFP+ NIC cards in each machine. With a bit of patience on ebay, I paid £23, £30 & £40 for them.
Add in 6 optical transceivers and 3 multi mode optical fibre cables, none of which are more than £5-10..... about £70-£80 in total.
So, all in for around £170ish for peer to peer 10Gbe connections from the windows desktop to both servers and direct from server to server......
Look here for a guide on how to do it.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMMopEiwiEo
As my system developed, I did hanker for a switch to tidy things up in the loft, so the search began.
As well documented here, you can easily part with lots of money....
My requirement was for a managed switch with PoE and, of course, 10Gbe ability.
My solution was centred around the HP Procurve 2910al series of switches. The switches themselves can be picked up for not much money at all, especially so if you can do without PoE. They incorporate 10Gbe by using two plugin modules with two NICs each in the back of the case. The modules can be horrifically expensive with some vendors wanting stupid money for them. I managed to find a 48G PoE switch with one module (2 NICs) in it for £200 on ebay in Bulgaria (!). I then managed to find another module separately for £50, which was greatly under priced.
So, all told, £170 to get going and another £250 to take me up to £420 for where I am now..... 48g PoE + 4 x 10Gbe.
Another upside was the ability to combine the three previous switches into one by the use of VLANs. I'm currently using 16 ports, so this switch should see me a long way into the future.....
I do also highly recommend the SFP+ / Fibre route. The bits are dirt cheap, the power consumption much lower than DAC and cable length will never be an issue. Also, adapters are available to go from SFP to RJ45.... you can't go the other way round.......
Downside? They're noisy and the fans aren't easily replaced like some other switches are. Mine's in the loft, so not a problem for me. Not all transceivers are compatible with all SFP slots. Certainly, HP switches need to see an "approved" transceiver in their ports. I'm sure you won't be amazed to hear that they're 'kin expensive. The good news is that there are pattern parts available at far more sensible prices.
The Mikrotik route looks/is highly attractive but be warned that there are certain use cases that see the performance of their 10G NICs fall to sub 1G levels A youtube search should tell you more.
Anyway, I hope that helps anyone who is looking at the 10Gbe route.
ATB,
Paul
For me, it was how to connect my windows desktop and two unraid servers that live in the loft.
The cheapest way (and covered before) is not to use a switch at all! I used Mellanox ConnectX-2 10Gbe Twin SFP+ NIC cards in each machine. With a bit of patience on ebay, I paid £23, £30 & £40 for them.
Add in 6 optical transceivers and 3 multi mode optical fibre cables, none of which are more than £5-10..... about £70-£80 in total.
So, all in for around £170ish for peer to peer 10Gbe connections from the windows desktop to both servers and direct from server to server......
Look here for a guide on how to do it.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMMopEiwiEo
As my system developed, I did hanker for a switch to tidy things up in the loft, so the search began.
As well documented here, you can easily part with lots of money....
My requirement was for a managed switch with PoE and, of course, 10Gbe ability.
My solution was centred around the HP Procurve 2910al series of switches. The switches themselves can be picked up for not much money at all, especially so if you can do without PoE. They incorporate 10Gbe by using two plugin modules with two NICs each in the back of the case. The modules can be horrifically expensive with some vendors wanting stupid money for them. I managed to find a 48G PoE switch with one module (2 NICs) in it for £200 on ebay in Bulgaria (!). I then managed to find another module separately for £50, which was greatly under priced.
So, all told, £170 to get going and another £250 to take me up to £420 for where I am now..... 48g PoE + 4 x 10Gbe.
Another upside was the ability to combine the three previous switches into one by the use of VLANs. I'm currently using 16 ports, so this switch should see me a long way into the future.....
I do also highly recommend the SFP+ / Fibre route. The bits are dirt cheap, the power consumption much lower than DAC and cable length will never be an issue. Also, adapters are available to go from SFP to RJ45.... you can't go the other way round.......
Downside? They're noisy and the fans aren't easily replaced like some other switches are. Mine's in the loft, so not a problem for me. Not all transceivers are compatible with all SFP slots. Certainly, HP switches need to see an "approved" transceiver in their ports. I'm sure you won't be amazed to hear that they're 'kin expensive. The good news is that there are pattern parts available at far more sensible prices.
The Mikrotik route looks/is highly attractive but be warned that there are certain use cases that see the performance of their 10G NICs fall to sub 1G levels A youtube search should tell you more.
Anyway, I hope that helps anyone who is looking at the 10Gbe route.
ATB,
Paul
I don’t really follow the title of this thread to be honest. 10gbit in the consumer space is very niche but it’s not at all if you step out of consumer equipment...
10gbit is a very old standard now and has been around for years. End of life 10gbit sfps are very cheap all over eBay, as are 10gbit fabrics or nexus’, and items like that. You can do this really cheaply if you buy some end of life decom datacentre equipment.
I guess others have touched on this and this is how it is going, and “cheap” is relatively different to everyone.
10gbit is a very old standard now and has been around for years. End of life 10gbit sfps are very cheap all over eBay, as are 10gbit fabrics or nexus’, and items like that. You can do this really cheaply if you buy some end of life decom datacentre equipment.
I guess others have touched on this and this is how it is going, and “cheap” is relatively different to everyone.
Soldato
I don't think it's confusing at all. Compared to gigabit ethernet 10GBaseT does indeed appear expensive. I think it's about to be come less niche as we transform data at home more and more and as WiFi6 becomes a thing that requires greater than gigabit ethernet LAN connections. While used equipment may look tempting a lot of people (myself included) are unwilling to buy used equipment on the premise that its almost always something that someone has ripped out because they didn't consider it either good enough or reliable enough to keep. And while the former equipment is fine, the latter wouldn't be. And they're not going to tell you that in an eBay ad. And by definition EoL is EoL so why would anyone want that. Most of the people on these forums are home user enthusiasts and by definition are ahead of the curve. And for a home user, 10GbE networking is still very expensive.
Very nice. I'm thinking of adding a dedicated fileserver and relegating my Microserver to Domain Controller, client backup, and WSUS.
What made you choose this board over (e.g.) the X10SDV-12C-TLN4f? That has 12 cores and onboard 10Gb Ethernet.
Soldato
It came up on the MM for £250 so that was the decision point, I already had a 10Gig NIC.
