10G PCIe 1x cards with SFP+ on them?

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richms

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#323344 21-Nov-2025 12:27

Plenty of cheap 10g cards that are 4x or worse because they are older PCIe standards, and there are the $80ish realtek cards that are a 1x slot, but only in RJ45.

Anyone found the magic combination of the 2? I want to use DAC cables so desire for RJ45s and needing to get hot modules for the switch end. No 16x slots left in these 2 machines after the GFX card and the storage card.

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mentalinc

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#3436366 21-Nov-2025 13:06

Mellanox Connectx-2 Dual Port

https://www.ebay.com/itm/126883046033

change the number to match your budget. Mellanox Connectx-3 Dual Port costs more, up to the latest which is get a mortgage

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richms

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#3436371 21-Nov-2025 13:17

That is not a 1x card. I don't even have open ended slots to just put one in and see how slow it goes being that its old and probably only gen 2 or 3 speeds.

Im looking at the Realtek8127 type price range of $80ish,

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mentalinc

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#3436372 21-Nov-2025 13:38

ahh misread it PCIe with 1 SFP instead of four, but be happy with 2 SFP.

You can get PCIe 8x to 1x lane cable riser/extension cable/ribbons...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002605292101.html

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richms

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#3436379 21-Nov-2025 13:54

If im going to be messing around with ribbons I will get one of the ones that goes in a m.2 slot with a ribbon to a backplane thing on it. Otherwise I will just deploy the 2.5 gear that I already have into them.

Just seems a waste when I could put another NVMe in that slot and have more storage. Really annoying how consumer platforms are so limited in connectivity.

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mentalinc

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#3436380 21-Nov-2025 13:57

You could 'mess around' and hacksaw out the back of the pci-e slot to make it open ended. [insert warning here]

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noroad

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#3436382 21-Nov-2025 14:12

richms:

Plenty of cheap 10g cards that are 4x or worse because they are older PCIe standards, and there are the $80ish realtek cards that are a 1x slot, but only in RJ45.

Anyone found the magic combination of the 2? I want to use DAC cables so desire for RJ45s and needing to get hot modules for the switch end. No 16x slots left in these 2 machines after the GFX card and the storage card.

Gen3 PCIE x1 only gives you about 8Gb/s theoretical max.

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richms

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#3436386 21-Nov-2025 14:21

noroad:

Gen3 PCIE x1 only gives you about 8Gb/s theoretical max.

Which is still a lot more than 2.5 gig which is the easy option. The other end is currently spinning rust that would not even fill 2.5 gig up on a good day, but I should be moving that to something better soon. even then it just has to be able to read the media off there and turn around and send it back out to the internet most of the time. Gig is just limiting when moving stuff around the place.

Its looking more like just some 2.5gig cards and another aliexpress no brand switch will be a much more affortable stopgap solution for now.

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noroad

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#3436387 21-Nov-2025 14:30

richms:

noroad:

Gen3 PCIE x1 only gives you about 8Gb/s theoretical max.

Which is still a lot more than 2.5 gig which is the easy option. The other end is currently spinning rust that would not even fill 2.5 gig up on a good day, but I should be moving that to something better soon. even then it just has to be able to read the media off there and turn around and send it back out to the internet most of the time. Gig is just limiting when moving stuff around the place.

Its looking more like just some 2.5gig cards and another aliexpress no brand switch will be a much more affortable stopgap solution for now.

2.5 is going to work well in your situation I would suggest. Make sure you get cards with a heat-sink attached for stability. 2.5, 5, 10G get steadily hotter as you get faster.

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#3436551 22-Nov-2025 03:09

I got a Aquantia AQC107 chipset card from IOCrest which does 10 Gbit/s on a PCIe v4 x1 slot - but it has the RJ45 interface. It works well, but does require a PCIe v4 slot to get enough bandwidth for 10 Gbit/s on just 1 PCIe lane. When I was looking (six months ago?), I only found two manufacturers of cards like this and they both used the same chipset. I did not see any with the SFP+ interface, but since chipsets that do PCIe v4 are new, that may have changed by now. If you really need SFP+ at the other end, then you can just use an RJ45 to SFP+ adapter at that end. Unfortunately, neither the NIC or an SFP+ adapter are cheap.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008337245217.html

https://www.michaelstinkerings.org/iocrest-pcie-40x1-10g-nic-review/

It looks like since I bought mine, the RTL8127 chipset has also arrived and also can do PCIe v4 x1, but the prices look similar to the AQC107 based cards, and I can not find any SFP+ versions so far.