ServeTheHome has an Ethernet switch buyers guide with loads of cheap 4x 2.5 + 2x 10G switches, if you only need two ports at 10 GBase-T right now.
There is quite a lot of these 2.5Gbit switches with a single 10Gbit uplink (SFP or 10Base-T) right now, evidently all using the same RealTek switch chip, completely passive and cheap. I'm using several of these as clusters in the house, where there is more than a single device in a room.
Among other things, power consumption is much higher at 10 GBase-T than at lower speeds. That means you need bigger heatsinks, as well, because it needs to be designed to sustain those speeds. This also makes fanless 10 GBase-T switches nonexistent, as far as I know. A lot of home users are wary of actively-cooled switches, give how loud some of those 1U boxes can be.
Netgear has been selling 8-port Nbase-T XS508M switches capable of 10Gbase-T on all ports that include a fan that I'd label as "unnoticeable".
It also has one port that can use SFP, for uplink or downlink. Having these dual personality 10Gbit ports included for free makes for a lot of flexibility for larger networks and can even save a bit of power e.g. when you connect the 10Gbit link to the 2.5 switch via a very cheap (when short) direct connect SFP cable.
Mostly it opens those Netgears up to using e.g. a 25 or 40 Gbit SFP switch with quad break-out cables (which is slightly beyond my means and needs).
Originally I started with a 12-port BS-MP2012 NBase-T from Buffalo around 10 years ago, which was affordable enough, but quite noisy with small high-speed fans.
I quieted those down as per some STH hints with Noctua fans, which is a bit borderline. It has dual Aquantia 6x switch chips inside and only Aquantia based 10GBit NICs from the hosts, meaning Green Ethernet and lowest negotiated power all around and perhaps for that reason still working just fine after probably 10 years now. With all eight ports going at max 10 Watt 10Gbase-T power, those quiet Noctua fans might not have been enough to have it survive.
I find it much easier to recommend the those Netgear XS508M 8-port switches which are zero trouble and so low noise at a budget that I found acceptable I've just added more of those and accepted that several 8-port switches aren't as great a network than one bigger switch (or some aggregate topology), but since I'm the only real power user in that network, it's fine for me.
As long as you can work with SFP direct connect exclusively (3 meters or less), prices have more or less equaled out on NICs and entry level switches, while power consumption is a bit less.
In my case that started too late and I wanted the flexibility of working with copper Ethernet cables exclusively.
Ethernet standards have been advancing, as have network product introductions. The only thing that hasn't changed in the past 5 years or so is the number of PC motherboards with built-in 10 GBase-T. Even 5 years ago, you could find high-end workstation and some server motherboards with it, but the situation hasn't changed much, in that time.
Aquantia set out to change the 1-10Gbase-T market completly with unusually low-power PHYs and the NBase-T flexibility. They didn't make friends with the old 10Gbit crowd that had hoped to make tons of money via faster networking and smarter VM and storage enabled unified smart NICs
The latter resulted in a blod-bath, because nobody wanted to risk Ethernet and fiber channel on a single wire and VMware got sick and tired of driver bugs, opting for a software-only approach for the entire 10Gbit generation. A lot of vendors merged, consolidated or disappeared over the next years. While Aquantia only got aquired late, it never experienced the growth their uniquely cheap and energy efficient offer should have practically guaranteed.
I've heard tons of harsh comments about the quality of their hardware and drivers in FreeNAS communities, but while there stuff is zero "smart"-NIC, I've had zero trouble with them and they are very well supported in all Linux and Windows, much better than Intel these days.
I can only assume that Aquantia's 'rightful' expansion in the multi-Gbit Ethernet marked sufferd from a lot of Intel headwind, who for the longest time didn't want intermediate speeds dilluting their 10Gbit margins and only conceeded very late and badly (in terms of quality) into the 2.5 Gbit market, but not with Aquantia NICs.
One of the bigger issues has been PCIe bandwidth needs, where a single lane of PCIe v2 was actually a good match for 2.5Gbit Ethernet. Sacrificing a full x4 slot to a faster network was never an easy choice, because there aren't a lot of those on desktop mainboards and usually I reserved those for RAID controllers. With NVMe eliminating those it's an easier choice, but at PCIe v4 a single lane should be quite enough for 10Gbit. And Aquantia even has had a chip ready for that for years.
But again, for reasons I'd really like to become more publically known, NICs with these chips are extremely hard to buy even years later. And then for some stupid reason I can find no kind words for, all of them come on two lane PCIe cards that won't fit into x1 slots which again aren't open at the rear for some $%# reason. Yes, at PCIe v3 you need two lanes, but why not just make that a different SKU? And I've never seen an x2 slot, it's either x1 or x4.
Sacrificing a PCIe v5 x4 slot for a NIC that requries a single v4 lane to function is so painful, I'd rather pay extra to waste a 20Gbit USB port I can't do anything meaningful with instead.
With the acquisition by Marvell the Aquantia portfolio seems almost undiscoverable. I have no idea if they fired the design team and let the chips run until the market dries up, but they certainly don't seem eager to let the consumer market know there is an economic, working and very compatible product out there.
Perhaps they are just waiting for Intel to grab that market as soon as they try, but at least RealTek is now doing 5Gbit.
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