I’m curious for recommendations of OEM versions of mellanox or intel NICs at 100Gb that are desktop compatible. What I mean by that is most if not all at this speed seem to be reliant on a server type directional air cooling mechanism to maintain an appropriate temperature. In the case of a desktop this is significantly reduced. I want to know if there are any versions of any of these NICs at 100gb that will not melt, or some form of fan adapter/ 3D printed accessory to maintain a temperature in a desktop chassis.
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Honestly, we just zip tie fans to the card or as close as possible and move on.
Used enterprise gear is cheap for a reason.
Decent first post though.
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I’m looking to buy new, so that’s the primary ask for the question. In my case I would be building and selling systems but for testing attaching a fan or homebrewing a solution is sufficient.
QNAP
Funny, I posted this just yesterday:
I would try to talk you out of buying new though. Server-pull dual QSFP28 CX4 cards can be had for like $150. They’re much less power-hungry than the CX6 or CX7 are, and I don’t think there are any tricks the newer cards have that are relevant to workstation use. You’d be saving over $1000 compared to a new CX6 - more than enough to provide warranty yourself.
Having said all that, I am using a bunch of these cards (mix of CX4 and CX6) myself. I’ve been thinking about designing a proper custom heatsink from copper with a low-profile fan mount, but never really had much of a motivation as the 3D-printed thing works well enough. But if you want to partner up on this we could get a better deal on an order (whether it’s skived or CNC’d or whatever) than either of us would alone. I’m not looking to make money on this, I just want like a dozen coolers for cheap-ish.
I’d be interested in this. Main reason I am looking at newer cards are because of SDk limitations, primarily rivermax and DPDK, as well as some official support for vendors. I’d be interested in the heatsink idea!
Awesome! I’m pretty sure have dead CX6 somewhere that I can do test fits with using a printed mock heatsink. I also have a couple of these coming on Monday from Mouser:
They’re much weaker than the ones I used for the 3d-printed cooler (like 1/8th the airflow) and not much quieter (31 vs 36dbA IIRC) but 2/3rds of the thickness and that might be necessary. They’re for another project but it’s worth trying them because there aren’t too many decent quality frameless fans out there that I know of.
Not sure what your requirements are, I’d ideally want to keep the card in its thermal specs while in a single slot & both neighbors occupied, and I don’t want it audible from the outside of the case. Possible compromises are on noise and width, and I’d much rather sacrifice width instead of silent operation should it be necessary.
I might not have a ton of time to work on this this coming week but the week after that things open up.
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