Asus Maximus 6 Formula compatibility with Cat 6e/7 cable?

[UnknownOtter]

I was wondering if anyone had experience with using cat 6e or cat 7 cable with the onboard ethernet connector. On the manual, it says RJ45, but thats it. It seems to fit Cat5 cable, but I haven't tested with any other cable.

 

[little_me]

Cat6e doesn't exist.

Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6A and Cat7 cables ALL use same RJ45 connector, shielded variants of said cables also use RJ45 except they have the shielding on top of the connector.

What is different between said cables is the maximum speed they can work at. 5 maxes out at 100Mb/sec, 5e maxes out at 1Gb/s as does Cat6.
Cat7 is capable of 10Gb/sec.
Motherboard network cards will 99.9% of time max out at 1Gb/sec though so you wont really benefit from using Cat7 cabling. It will not hurt you either though except maybe as a price since Cat7 will cost more than 5e or 6

 

[UnknownOtter]

Cat6e doesn't exist.

Cat5, Cat5e, Cat6, Cat6A and Cat7 cables ALL use same RJ45 connector, shielded variants of said cables also use RJ45 except they have the shielding on top of the connector.

What is different between said cables is the maximum speed they can work at. 5 maxes out at 100Mb/sec, 5e maxes out at 1Gb/s as does Cat6.
Cat7 is capable of 10Gb/sec.
Motherboard network cards will 99.9% of time max out at 1Gb/sec though so you wont really benefit from using Cat7 cabling. It will not hurt you either though except maybe as a price since Cat7 will cost more than 5e or 6

So I should use cat 6/cat 6a cabling?

 

[little_me]

I would go for cat6 at this point if getting new cables. Cat5e will work just fine in almost all situations though so I would not recommend replacing them based on "just because cat6 is better" reasons.

Only in longer distances 5e might not work up to that specified 1Gb/sec it maxes out at and falls back to 100Mb/sec.
Although most of us don't have that fast internet connection either so... except for in-house file transfers being possibly bit slower, it wont really hurt you.
Also bear in mind that unless the router/switch ALSO supports 1Gb speed, you will not be able to use that anyway. many of the routers are still only up to 100Mb/s.