Want To Add 5GbE To Your System, BrosTrend Got Your Back
It Pairs Nicely With A 5GbE Nicgiga Switch
If your motherboard lacks 5GbE and you’ve upgraded your network to support it, or even 2.5GbE then the BrosTrend 5GbE PCIe adapter offers an inexpensive way to upgrade your system. For a mere $34, or $20 if you only need 2.5GbE you can boost your networking speeds quickly and easily. One of the great things about this 5GbE adapter is that all it wants is a single PCIe 3.0 lane to offer you full speed.
ServeTheHome have tried similar adapters, which all want a free PCIe 4.0 1x slot free which is far less common on older motherboards than a PCIe 3.0 1x slot. You won’t feel the difference in speed, as PCIe 3.0 is enough to offer you 5GbE. It also comes with a branded heatsink and backplate; it’s nice to see BrosTech is willing to put their name on both.
If you want 10GbE you will need more lanes, but if you just want to jump to 5GbE the tests prove this adapter can do it for you, bro.
Let us face it, there are many systems that do not have a Gen4 x1 slot open, but perhaps have a Gen3 x1 slot. This is for those situations.
So, I got bit my this bug recently. My home network has been 1Gb for a number of years–up from a mixed 100M+1Gb network before that…. But i’ve been accumulating 2.5Gb capable devices as time went on. A while back I got a good deal on a 4 port 2.5G + 2 port 10G SFP+ switch. I meant to use it on the few devices I had which were 2.5G, but the file server was stubbornly at 1Gb, so it never really made sense to use it.
A recent needed expansion/rebuild of the file server left me with a 10Gb SFP+ slot in it and the real fun began. I tried out the little 4+2 switch and that was fun. It’s pretty easy to saturate those with iperf3 and I was able to get two active 2.5Gb systems talking to the 10Gb server at the same time which was exiciting. But that got me looking and I fell down a rabbit hole. I learned about DAC cables, SFP+ modules for RJ45/10Gb, SFP+ modules for a variety of optical interconnects and the many different types of fiber that go with them!
My main PC has all of its slots full except *one* PCI-E v4x1. There’s only two chipsets which support 10Gb on a single PCI-E v4x1 slot. One of them is realtek, so I went with the Marvel one. It works great, but it’s RJ45 and it’s around $50. I would have prefered one with SFP+ because optical is actually cheaper than RJ45! That shocked me as well. The SFP+ module for RJ45 is $25 and the NIC was $50. (the cable is free as I’ve got plenty of it and I make my own cables) But for optical, the transceivers are $6 each (would need two instead of one) and the 10Gb NICs with SFP+ are more like $20 to $25. Throw in a $15 20m optical cable and that’s cheaper and lower power.
After the dust settled, I have my main PC with a 10Gb RJ45 connection back to an SFP+ module in the ‘core’ 10Gb switch (8 port SFP+ 10Gb switch) which also has the file server with a DAC cable at 10Gb as well. The spare/backup/test server also has a 10Gb SFP+ port and it was where I tried the variety of optical interconnects. The main 24 port 1Gb switch is now upgraded to a 24 port 2.5Gb swith with two 10Gb SFP+ ports. One of those uses a DAC to link to the core 10Gb switch.
As I build out my office more, I’m going to use the 4 + 2 port switch there. I’ll run an optical line from the core switch and have 4 2.5Gb ports and a spare 10Gb SFP+ port.
So, beware, this is a good itch to scratch, but don’t go crazy. 🙂
Just had a similar experience at my office. I was tired of copying 4k video files back and forth from the NAS, so I picked up one of those cheap 4 x 2.5gb + 2 x 10gb SFP switches. Connected my workstation and server to the SFP ports via DAC cables and now can edit video directly off the NAS.
Also, you might want to search up the RTL8127 chipset – finally 10gbe for the masses!
That’s the other 10Gb chipset I mentioned. I intentionally avoided it. I’ve not heard good things about it. Latter versions of realtek chips generally work out the bugs, but their early versions are often very buggy. I remember the 1Gb and fast ethernet eras. Lots of wonky issues with the drivers.