I’m looking to consolidate my nas and router which are both currently virtualised onto a single box.
I’m trying to understand if there are any motherboard option in the intel camp (z690/z790) that will allow me to run 2 x520 NICs for a total of 4 10G ports.
I plan to pass one port through to the router, 2 ports through to the NAS (LACP) and the last to the host for the virtual bridge. I’m planning to pass the either the SATA controller or NVME drives through to the NAS so I won’t need a slot for a SAS card.
I understand that each x520 will need 8xPCIE lanes meaning I need to find a board that will provide 2 ports at 8x. Pretty much all the boards I have found have a single x16 port and the remainder are all 4x. I thought bifurcated boards from ASUS would provide what I wanted however reading into it the bifurcation splits the main x16 slot into 8x/8x … rather than splitting the lanes between pcie slots.
Does anyone know if a board exists that will give me two pcie slots with 8 lanes each?
Yeah I have a couple of them lying around but thanks for the idea.
You got me thinking I could throw a quad into a tiny m920q and replace the dual sfp+ card I have in there but I reckon I’d be really pushing the heat envelope.
The problem with a z760 motherboard with multiple X8 slots, if it exists, will be price … I think using an x710 from ebay and a normal motherboard will cost less than keeping the two x520s and the unicorn mobo… also it will use less power…