10g card gen 4 pciex1

Hey all,

I’m wanting to get a 10gb card for my pc, but I’m currently using all my pcie 16 lane slots. Does any one here know if I would be able to take full advantage of the 10gb card on a gen 4 pciex1 slot with some physical modifications? Correct me if I’m wrong, but based on my quick research, the gen4 pcie can do 2GB/s so I should be able to route 10gb, correct? I have an msi unify motherboard and the nvme heat sinks would not make it possible to modify the slot, so I guess I would need to cut the 10gb card itself to fit the slot.

Any suggestions?
If this doesn’t fit in this thread let me know.
Thanks in advance.

I think you would need to find a 10gb nic that is pcie gen 4.0, otherwise the link negotiate to the older gen3 or gen2 x1 and cut throughput. If you can find a single port pcie gen4 10gb nic it might be x1 already since that is all it needs.

I would be hesitant to cut down the card. See if you can find a x1 riser or cable. There are several x1 to x16 cables/adapters for they guys who do mining rigs, you’re probably still limited to the x1 speed of the slowest generation of the combined parts, but you wouldn’t have to cut anything. (something like: https://www.amazon.com/6-Pin-Powered-PCI-Express-Riser/dp/B0741THJ8C)

If you have a spare m.2 slot, you can use an adapter to pcie x4 and run a normal 10gb nic at full speeds. Mounting in the case might be difficult though. (https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-00AP-00075?Description=m.2%20adapter&cm_re=m.2_adapter--9SIA4RE9JT9618--Product)

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Yes, but is the 10G card a Gen4 card? If not, it will run at Gen3 or Gen2 speeds, whatever it supports.

@zlynx
I see.
I haven’t really looked into the card itself.
Do you have any recommendations? A quick search didn’t return any 10gb cards with a pciex1 slot, or gen 4 cards for that matter, though I only looked in consumer-grade outlets :confused:

@ChuckH
Really cool. I was unaware of the m.2 adapters.

I currently don’t have all the m.2 slots populated, though my intention was to populate all of them.

I have an unused pciex4 slot that I also wanted to use for nvme storage, but if I can’t find a gen4 nic, I might just use that one for the network card and use some external storage if needed…

10g 4x PCIe cards are definitely available.

Another option, depending on the rest of your network, is to buy a 2.5g card. They are easily available in 1x format, and even 1x PCIe 3.0 is fast enough for them. It would not be as much of a boost, but that may or may not matter.

Examples:


are we talking about pcie gen 4, or pcie x4 electrical connection? A gen 4 slot only works at gen 4 with cards that are also gen 4. Otherwise it will drop down to gen 3 or 2.

i’m not aware of any pcie gen 4 networking cards, maybe multiport 100gig cards?

Oh so just to clarify, I’m looking for a gen 4 pciex1 in case I wasn’t clear earlier. If they exist…
I haven’t found one which is why I was wondering if maybe I could cut one down to fit in a pciex1 slot. But I hadn’t thought about the fact that the cut-down card would also have to be gen4 to work at full speed or else it would drop down to gen3 or gen2 (or whatever gen the card is).

@gordonthree
Yea, I think you are right. I have not seen a 10g NIC card that explicitly says gen4.

@TheCakeIsNaOH
I actually have one of the 2.5g cards you posted, but I was hoping to get a 10g for my setup. As for the 10g you posted, there is no clear indication of weather or not it is gen 4 or not.

What would be the speed of gen 3 pciex1? If gen4 pciex1 is 2GB/s would a gen3 be half that? Wouldn’t that be enough for 10gb/s?

edit:
Just checked the speeds for gen3. It is in fact half of gen4. Which makes me wonder why most 10g cards are physically built for 4GB/s? From what I can tell, gen3 10g cards are pciex4 and gen2 is pciex8 for a total of 4GB/s bandwidth. If for some reason 10gb/s cards need that much bandwidth to function, then it looks like I won’t see a pciex1 card until next generation.
:confused:

I’ve got a gen2 x4 card that is single port, it can run iperf at full speed so gen4 x1 would have enough throughput. It should only need 4GB/s if it is 2 port and and you want both ports to have full speed at the same time.

I think some people on here have used the m.2 adapters with mixed success. I’ve never used them.

I would guess that with time a gen4 x1 10gb nic will come out on the market. 10gb is just not that common yet and pcie gen4 is still fairly new.

I’m pretty sure it is gen 3, but four lanes at gen 3 is plenty of speed.

@l1c is looking for an x1 card to fit the slot he has available. So he would be stuck with x1 gen 3 at 985 MB/s. Not quite the 1.25 GB/s that 10gb can do, but more than a 2.5gb card!

But also has a x4 slot available, although less desirable.

There aren’t any USB 10G adapters right now, and I don’t think your mobo has Thunderbolt, but 5G adapters should work.

you’ll need a riser or to remove the PCI-E metal bracket and go full ghetto

alternatively

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Yea I’m trying to use the 4 lane slot for nvme storage, so it would be preffered to use the 1 lane slot for the network card, but it might not be the end of the world if I had to use the 4 lane slot for the NIC.

@ChuckH if I’m able to get 985 MB/s that would not be so bad compared to the ~300 MB/s I’m getting right now with the 2.5 card.

Does anyone have any suggestion for how to go about cutting the pcie card?

Oh I see. I think I might have misread the pcie gen. of the cards I was looking at. It still seems odd that some of the cards are physically built for more bandwidth than they put out.

don’t cut your card, cut the slot open, linus actually mentioned this one of the recent wan shows, much easier and less likely to mess up

I would avoid cutting, it keeps the nic from getting used at its full speed ever again. Plus PCBs are multi-layer, you could cut something in the middle layers that could cause a short or kill the card. I would try one of the adapters used for mining rigs.

This one doesn’t say its generation and the data rate is only 2.5Gbps.

this is rated for gen3

@GigaBusterEXE
That was my initial plan, but the msi unify has the m.2 slots right next to the the 1-lane slots, unfortunately. And even if the card clears the nvme vertically the heatsinks would surely get in the way :confused:

is your 10Gbe full height or does it come with a bracket to make it half height?

Yea, now that you mention it the card could be used later on another build, so it would be best not mess with it. And they are a lot cheaper then they have been in the past but still not very cheap.

I think the riser is probably my best bet.