10Gbit PCI-E network card recommendations

[Chris Hasinski]

Hello

I have a nice 10Gbit (both upload and download) connection at my home office and three workstations using it. One is MacMini, but two others are regular PCs.

Currently I use Asus XG-C100C cards in both of them, but:
- they often randomly drop the connection for a couple seconds
- they often won't work after a restart until I unplug and plug in back again the network cable

- Asus has no driver or firmware updates for them that could fix those issues

I have CAT6 cables in walls, about 10 meters to the switch, so it should work (and it works with my MacMini). 

 

I'm looking for something else, could be SPF+ with a transceiver or 10Gbit BASE-T. Must have drivers for Linux (current version of Ubuntu), nice to have drivers for Win10 (which I only use for gaming so it's less of a priority, but hey, it would be awesome to just have one ethernet cable running to that box).

[Oshino Shinobu]

You can normally pick up Intel X540 either T1 or T2 models for a reasonable price on eBay. In terms of driver support across systems, Intel tends to be one of the best.

[Chris Hasinski]

5 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

You can normally pick up Intel X540 either T1 or T2 models for a reasonable price on eBay. In terms of driver support across systems, Intel tends to be one of the best.

I've seen them online, they look decent, however I'm worried if they can do full 10Gbit because they are PCIe v2.1 (which at x8 is "5.0 GT/s" quoting their specs). Do you have any experience with them?

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, Chris Hasinski said:

I've seen them online, they look decent, however I'm worried if they can do full 10Gbit because they are PCIe v2.1 (which at x8 is 5.0 GT/s). Do you have any experience with them?

PCIe 2.1 x8 provides 4GB/s of bandwidth, which is 32Gb/s, plenty of bandwidth. 5.0 GT/s is the transfer rate of PCIe 2.0/2.1, not the bandwidth of an 8 lane 2.1 connection. 

 

 

I have no personal experience with them. I personally use the XG-C100C as you do, but I haven't had any issues with them. The X540 is well regarded among the home server forums and subreddits.

[Chris Hasinski]

Thank you, I've misread that spec badly. Seems like this solves my issue, I'll get a pair of those cards and see where it takes me

[Oshino Shinobu]

2 minutes ago, Chris Hasinski said:

Thank you, I've misread that spec badly. Seems like this solves my issue, I'll get a pair of those cards and see where it takes me

Actually, I lied (or rather, I forgot). I do have experience with the X540-T2. I bought a pair of them early last year but made the mistake of going for ones with a small heatsink and fan setup. The fans were silly loud (fans were faulty) and the cards would overheat without them so I returned them. While they did work, they achieved 10Gb/s no problem. My advice would be to try to go for one with a big passive heatsink rather than one with a fan. If you do go for one with a fan, I'd advise replacing it with a 40mm fan from the likes of Noctua or similar to reduce noise. 

 

Other option is to go for one of Intel's SFP+ options and use SFP+ or an SFP+ to 10G RJ45 module. Think the X520 is their SFP+ version of the X540.

[DogKnight]

I have a couple of Intel X550 NIC's. Have been very reliable, passively cooled. Get's full 10gb speeds no issue. 

I had issues with some of the Asus cards with two of them being DOA. So after that experience I picked up the X550's off ebay. 

[Chris Hasinski]

A small update:

I've bought a used X540-T2 (with a big heatsink, no fan) since I couldn't get anything new that quickly. I've been using it since yesterday and it seems stable.

 

Speedtest is a little bit slower today, but that might be other devices on the network hogging up the bandwidth, and it's definitely good enough:

https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/ad5cc1b0-dedb-4c28-a5cf-5cc7a5e79811