News Realtek's $10 tiny 10GbE network adapter is coming to motherboards later this year

[butidontwantausername]

It kills me that this is such a chicken and an egg problem. Motherboard and AIC manufacturers complain that nobody is seeking out the higher end network options, and the reason nobody is doing so is because the rest of the infrastructure is so wildly overpriced as to be a non-starter.

So many people would gladly move up to 2.5GbE or 5GbE if not full 10GbE quickly if there was something closer to reasonable price parity to the current crop of hardware. But when a 5 port switch has such wild disparity, nobody can be blamed for the lack of "excitement" around faster networking technologies.

5 port switch costs:
1GbE switch is around $15
2.5GbE switch is $80-$140
10GbE is $300

Even taking the argument that 10GbE should be 10x the price of 1GbE, that should put the price at $150 for a 10GbE 5-port switch. Prices are so wildly skewed on switching gear as to make any home network speed upgrades unfeasible for the large majority of the populace.

Part of the chicken and egg problem is lack of demand. 1GbE is enough for the vast majority of users. If I need to transfer a 20 GB Blu-ray rip across the network it takes about 3 minutes. I can easily let that go in the background while I'm doing other things. 10GbE would be something like 20-ish seconds, but why do I need all that extra expense? A 10GbE adapter isn't going to make my gigabit fiber any faster.

Furthermore, to "upgrade" to 10GbE I'd need one of these cards for both PCs on the network, plus a new router, a new NAS, new cabling, etc, and for what? I don't have a home lab. I'm not transferring hundreds of terabytes of data across my network daily. I don't need 10GbE to stream movies from my Plex server. It's just a waste of money for something that'll never get used properly, and I'd much rather use the savings to pay for something else I might actually use.

It's like companies trying to sell audiophile gear or 8K tvs to the general public. There's just no demand. It might be technically better, but nobody cares outside of a few oddly obsessed people.

 

[butidontwantausername]

Even when you nominally have > 1 Gbps internet service, I think it's rare to see downloads faster than 1 Gbps, in actual practice.

And no, you can't trust those "speed test" sites, because I'm sure ISPs give them prioritized access, so that their customers think their internet speeds are better than they really are. I definitely get speeds from one of those sites that I never see, for anything else on the internet.

100% this. The number of sites that throttle you to a couple Mbps or lower is too high. I have gig fiber and I don't think I've seen anything other than a speed test use more than about 350 Mbps.

 

[bit_user]

For your DAC I find it interesting that you can only go 5m on a 10Gb DAC. You can get passive cables to 7m and active to 10m. Granted those are $40 and $100+ respectively.

I was just speaking from what I recall reading. The longest SFP+ copper cable I have is only like 3m. So, I'm not speaking from experience.

 

[bit_user]

Part of the chicken and egg problem is lack of demand. 1GbE is enough for the vast majority of users.

Let's not forget that a lot of people are using wifi, for connectivity. And not the most expensive wifi routers, either. Practical wifi speeds are much worse than theoretical, and still not gigabit-level (in my experience).

So, I primarily blame the mass adoption of wifi, for home networking, for the lack of consumer demand for better wired networking speeds. In most high-end commercial networking applications, twisted-pair copper has fallen out of favor many years ago, and thus cannot be relied upon to drive prices down like before.

Another point to keep in mind is that consumers (or even "SOHO" users) didn't have an easy way to get close to 10 gigabit speeds, until NVMe came around (late 2016, IIRC). In practice, SATA SSDs would top out around 5 gigabits, and it wasn't common to use them in RAIDs.

On the supply side, I've never heard a great explanation for why prices of twisted-pair Ethernet hardware has stayed so stubbornly high. In the early days, I read a little about the technical challenges posed by gigabit and 10 gig Ethernet. I don't know if it's due to heavy use of mixed-signal circuitry or what, but it really seems to be the transceivers that are the main cost item. As much as that impacts NIC and motherboard prices, the impact on switch prices is multiplied.

If I need to transfer a 20 GB Blu-ray rip across the network it takes about 3 minutes. I can easily let that go in the background while I'm doing other things. 10GbE would be something like 20-ish seconds, but why do I need all that extra expense?

Yup. On the other hand, if I'm frequently opening files from my fileserver, that just tiny amount of extra time needed to wait for some of them to open just makes the experience feel slower.

Also, for doing backups to my fileserver, my network is a limiting factor. So, that's another place the extra speed is welcome.

Furthermore, to "upgrade" to 10GbE I'd need one of these cards for both PCs on the network, plus a new router, a new NAS, new cabling, etc, and for what?

This is what makes 2.5G a lot more natural. The 3 motherboards I've bought in the last 3 years just came with 2.5G, and two of them aren't particularly high-end. Heck, even a little mini-PC I bought has it!

When I needed to replace my cable modem, I made sure to get one with a 2.5G LAN port. A year later, when I decided to replace my router (old one was requiring to be power-cycled a couple times/month), I again made sure to get one with 2.5G on both LAN and WAN. Now, virtually all of my machines are connected via either 2.5G or 10G.

This is how it should work. New products just organically feature higher speeds.

 

[palladin9479]

10Gbe PciE adapters are already cheap enough. You can get one from intel for a hundred or so. Cat5E cables are fine for short around the house distances, you won't get 100 meters but you don't need that. It's the switches that are expensive, TP-Link makes an affordable 5 port one, not many others do.

 

[bit_user]

10Gbe PciE adapters are already cheap enough. You can get one from intel for a hundred or so.

Back in 2018, I got an Acquantia AQC-107 PCIe card. They were selling for $90, but I scored a black friday discount and it cost me only $68.

Since Marvell bought them, they've slipped below the radar for a bit, but lately they're back. There are still some AQC-107 products on the market, with one card showing up on Amazon for $60. I see an AQC-113 card for $67.

SFP+ 10GBase-T transceivers seem to be cheapest in multi-pack form. Individual modules seem to start around $30, but there's a 2-pack for $51.

For the most part, it seems cheaper to get an import switch with 10GBase-T ports integrated, rather than getting one with SFP+ ports and adding 10GBaseT transceivers. Overall, the cheapest option is still probably to go SFP+ for switch + cards and use DAC cables, but a lot of the cheap SFP+ cards are PCIe x8.

 

[thestryker]

Regarding the edit: CAT6 has better shielding and signal integrity, but it and CAT5e are both using the same number of wires and the same connectors, and there’s no way for the cable to signal its capabilities to the connected devices. I’m almost certain I’ve heard of 10GBE over CAT5e in short runs/favorable environments before, even if the CAT5e spec can’t guarantee it over the maximum cable length and in hostile environments.

CAT 6A is minimum required for full length, but CAT 5e/6 should be sufficient for most home runs.

 

[thestryker]

For your DAC I find it interesting that you can only go 5m on a 10Gb DAC. You can get passive cables to 7m and active to 10m. Granted those are $40 and $100+ respectively.

I'm definitely running a 7m passive between my X710 and XGS1010-12 switch without issue.

 

[thestryker]

It's the switches that are expensive, TP-Link makes an affordable 5 port one, not many others do.

Absolutely, and they should be dropping in price with the new chips from Realtek (you can already get cheap ones from the random brand names out of China). This is why when I first moved to 10Gb it was SFP (cheapest NICs at the time) with a direct connection from my primary machine to my server using a 1Gb connection for the rest of the network.

 

[ravewulf]

Hopefully it does get integrated up and down the product stacks going forward and I can free up a PCIe slot when I upgrade to my next board rather than keep the 10Gig card I have now.

I'd also like to see motherboard makers get back to basics and include more connectivity beyond USB. Kinda nuts that some AM5 boards only have one or two audio jacks and most top out at three. They're also skimping on SATA ports, which, although I understand we're largely migrating to M.2, SATA ports take up less space if you want to connect multiple drives for bulk storage or need to connect existing SATA drives (currently have one 4TB M.2, one 2TB M.2, two 4TB 2.5" SATA SSDs, and one last 8TB HDD).

If I can free up a slot by having integrated 10Gig in a board that isn't too expensive, I could add a SATA controller or sound card to make up for whatever ports future motherboards end up lacking.

 

[bit_user]

Hopefully it does get integrated up and down the product stacks going forward and I can free up a PCIe slot when I upgrade to my next board rather than keep the 10Gig card I have now.

That's why I paid the extra money for the version of server board I have with the 10G integrated. Being a microATX board, it only has 3 PCIe slots and a 2-wide graphics card would eat up two of them. So, a 10G card in the 3rd slot would leave me with no room for anything else.

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X570D4U-2L2T
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Kinda nuts that some AM5 boards only have one or two audio jacks and most top out at three.

You just need a break-out bracket for the motherboard's HD audio header.

 

[thestryker]

They're also skimping on SATA ports

This is mostly an AMD problem due to their chipset design. Most Intel boards still have 4 and can have up to 8 though I think they're limited to 2GB/s total throughput (this was a problem in the past and I haven't bothered looking in years).

 

[ravewulf]

You just need a break-out bracket for the motherboard's HD audio header.

Which would mean not connecting the case's front panel audio jacks.

Or motherboard makers could spend a few more pennies for 5 - 6 rear audio jacks so those 7.1 audio chips are actually usable.

 

[bit_user]

Which would mean not connecting the case's front panel audio jacks.

I wonder if there are splitters, so you could do both.

Or motherboard makers could spend a few more pennies for 5 - 6 rear audio jacks so those 7.1 audio chips are actually usable.

Yeah, although I've always preferred to use an outboard DAC. I wonder if there's a way you can route the HD Audio output over HDMI/DisplayPort.

 

[palladin9479]

Which would mean not connecting the case's front panel audio jacks.

Or motherboard makers could spend a few more pennies for 5 - 6 rear audio jacks so those 7.1 audio chips are actually usable.

I gave up on those Realtek motherboard chips when Windows 10 kept trying to install a "newer" but broken driver. I would then reinstall the audio drivers provided by ASUS only to have Windows replace them again on the next version update. Ended up buying a PCIe sound card from Creative and it's been smooth sailing since.

https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Internal-Headphones-Discrete-Supports/dp/B08HYPH5T6

$100 but I get to move it from system to system and never worry about MB audio shenanigans.

 

[TheSecondPower]

Part of the chicken and egg problem is lack of demand. 1GbE is enough for the vast majority of users. If I need to transfer a 20 GB Blu-ray rip across the network it takes about 3 minutes. I can easily let that go in the background while I'm doing other things. 10GbE would be something like 20-ish seconds, but why do I need all that extra expense? A 10GbE adapter isn't going to make my gigabit fiber any faster.

Furthermore, to "upgrade" to 10GbE I'd need one of these cards for both PCs on the network, plus a new router, a new NAS, new cabling, etc, and for what? I don't have a home lab. I'm not transferring hundreds of terabytes of data across my network daily. I don't need 10GbE to stream movies from my Plex server. It's just a waste of money for something that'll never get used properly, and I'd much rather use the savings to pay for something else I might actually use.

It's like companies trying to sell audiophile gear or 8K tvs to the general public. There's just no demand. It might be technically better, but nobody cares outside of a few oddly obsessed people.

Sure you can wait 3 minutes for one small movie rip or 12 minutes to transfer a larger blac ray rip, but at some point you're going to need to transfer the entire collection to a new NAS, and now you're looking at hours or even days.

 

[BFG-9000]

It's really too bad these are QFN 88 like their wifi and switch chips. If they were only 7x7mm QFN 48 and pin-compatible with their older PCIe gigabit chips it would've made for an interesting motherboard upgrade without having to waste a PCIe slot.

 

[ravewulf]

I gave up on those Realtek motherboard chips when Windows 10 kept trying to install a "newer" but broken driver. I would then reinstall the audio drivers provided by ASUS only to have Windows replace them again on the next version update. Ended up buying a PCIe sound card from Creative and it's been smooth sailing since.

https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Internal-Headphones-Discrete-Supports/dp/B08HYPH5T6

$100 but I get to move it from system to system and never worry about MB audio shenanigans.

Yep, had that happen, too. On my laptop it also installed the wrong driver for the Wi-Fi radio on/off switch of all things. I just disable driver updates through Windows Update so it doesn't screw things up lol