We could really do with a compact fibre connection on boards for the consumer space that isn't sfp+, be ausd that will not fit on a typical motherboard. We can get away with copper at 10Gb but the move to glass fibre is inevitable and lower power and the enterprise solution isn't a good fit for the domestic market and motherboards.
Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
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Re: Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
#22I'm as particular as I need to be with my NIC choices. Mostly it was Intel, especially in firewalls.
But Intel I225 (2.5GbE) chipsets were causing a lot of grief, 2022-2024. Realtek was same as ever and that made them a potentially better choice.
I think the 225/226 are better now. I have a 4 port arriving today and we'll see.
Re: Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
#23The word is these new modules will use less power and be less scortchy than existing 10GbE choices.
ref: https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/05/22/realtek-rtl8127-rtl8...
Re: Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
#24We could really do with a compact fibre connection on boards for the consumer space that isn't sfp+, be ausd that will not fit on a typical motherboard. We can get away with copper at 10Gb but the move to glass fibre is inevitable and lower power and the enterprise solution isn't a good fit for the domestic market and motherboards.
I'm not really sure will consumers need modules in the fiber solution. Just give them a fixed connector when the time comes.
Re: Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
#25> and while the company still sells the AQC107 silicon, it is quite expensive for motherboard integration, and add-on cards are, by definitio,n more expensive than integrated solutions. Not sure what a 10GbE motherboard would cost today, but in 2022 I bought ASUS ProArt X570 (1x 10GbE + 1x 2.5GbE) for ~400 EUR, and just the other day I got the Asus XG-C100C (1x 10GbE) network adapter for another machine for ~80 EUR.…
Aside from the cost, ACQ107 is not very reliable in my experience. I have one that randomly drops the connection every now and then, even at sub-10Gbps speeds. Switching to a different NIC makes everything rock stable.
I've got several, they've been fine for me. That said modern NIC variants in general seem to be a crapshoot, regardless of speed/price.
Re: Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
#26Oh my god can you please just use normal SFP+ already.
Few people these days use any wired networking. And an even smaller percentage of those people would migrate to fiber. 10gbe is still easily done over copper.
Re: Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
#27If you want to add 10G to existing systems, cards with the old Niantic 82599EN chipset are cheap and widely available (now branded Intel). They use the IXGBE driver in Linux, and work out of the box on Windows as well. SFP 10G fiber transceivers are much cheaper than 10G copper: I saved money by using OM3 instead of cat6, but YMMV.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZRSQM9
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DCZCA3O
An old PC I built in 2013 is able to saturate one of those with room to spare.
Re: Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
SFP+ is not a good choice for a consumer device. From a physical pov it’s not rated for anywhere near as many mating cycles and requires user care to protect against environmental damage. From a connectivity pov you’re limited to short runs for DAC or extra cost to add a transceiver on each side.
Consumers don't need to detach/attach the actual modules. They can just plug in their ethernet cables like normal, except they'd also have the option to switch to something better in the long run. It's more expensive but hardly an impossible fit. My router comes with an SFP+ port on the fiber side, it's just not labeled as such. Combining SFP+ with fiber in consumer spaces is going to be more of a challenge (although…
> They can just plug in their ethernet cables like normal, except they'd also have the option to switch to something better in the long run.
I don't think many will exercise that option, and it adds complexity and costs that most people won't need. It would be useful for some, so it would make sense to make some boards with sfp+ rather than an integrated transceiver, but not as the default.
If you want 10G sfp+, Intel x520 cards are cheap on ebay.
Re: Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
With such a low price point, it will creep into regular, non-prosumer hardware.
But $10 is not a cheap price point - if it's a component on a motherboard, it really needs to be sub 25 cents in 10k volume orders before motherboard manufacturers start shoving it into mid level boards just to have one more bullet point on the spec sheet of a motherboard which sells for $50.
The current 1G components are already 4x-8x that cost in volume. Much like 100M never seemed to quite go away for decades (and still hasn't in certain areas), this doesn't need to hit the bottom barrel to still hit cheap motherboards. Especially for people buying by components, many "entry level" A620 motherboards launched 2 years ago already had 2.5G NICs.
It may be a bit longer before random PCs at Walmart have 10G more often than not but it won't be long at all for "mid range" motherboards you're talking about.
Re: Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE NIC will hit motherboards soon
#30If you want to add 10G to existing systems, cards with the old Niantic 82599EN chipset are cheap and widely available (now branded Intel). They use the IXGBE driver in Linux, and work out of the box on Windows as well. SFP 10G fiber transceivers are much cheaper than 10G copper: I saved money by using OM3 instead of cat6, but YMMV. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZRSQM9 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DCZCA3O An old PC I…
This is really helpful information, thank you!
$30/card out the door isn't bad, although I wonder what the power draw is like. I've noticed my SFP+ 10gbit cards and transceivers get quite warm (different models from what you linked).