What PCIe3 and PCIe4 single/dual 10gb NICs do you recommend

Hi there,

I just got a 2gb internet connection so the onboard 1gb nics of my setup are obsolete (which is great actually haha). My NAS has PCIe3 and my homelab where the Proxmox is has PCIe4. I’m thinking of connecting internet to the latter and connect the two with 10gb. I have a laptop with WIFI-6E so I believe this way I can avoid upgrading the router, at least for now (maybe even going forbidden router in the future?).
I’ve looked around quite a bit but I’m still unsure what’s the best option. For what I read there aren’t many x1 cards out there so I guess at the very least they have to be x4 but I’d like to understand what options I have. I believe general consensus is the best dual 10gb NIC is Intel X550-t2 but I’m struggling to determine what are the best single 10gb NIC for my use cases. I see people recommending Intel X540 but they are very old and I found issues in similar setups to mine so I don’t know.
What do you recommend?

Thanks in advance,
Leo

Hi Leo,

Just joined the forums, and just posted my first article about a very similar topic of 10GBE NIC.

If you’re going the Mellanox NIC route (you can get them cheaply for around $30ea.) 100% I recommend avoiding the X-3 and going for the Mellanox X-4 NIC PCIE cards, (you can get them as single or double SPF ports on each).

And critically (for Windows) the X-4 has better driver support.

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I used X550-T2 in my machines. Don’t worry about single vs dual ports. Never hurts having multiple interfaces, and that utilizes the occupied PCIe slot better IMHO. Have a good one!

That’s a good point, I didn’t think about that