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by kohlschuetter 140 days ago
I don't know how to measure the direct power impact on a MacBook Pro (since it's got a battery), but the typical power consumption of these cards is 9 W, not much more than Aquantia 10 GBit cards.

Also, if you remember where you saw that logo, please let me know!
2 comments
usagisushi 140 days ago
JFYI, for measuring power draw, you might be able to use `macmon`[0] to see the total system power consumption. The values reported by the internal current sensor seem to be quite accurate.

[0] https://github.com/vladkens/macmon

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usagisushi 140 days ago
Speaking of hardware, the RTL8159 (10Gbps) hit the market late last year and is said to consume only about 2–3W. It apparently runs very cool compared to older chips. (Though it would need to be bonded to reach 25Gbps ;-)
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kohlschuetter 140 days ago
I got me one of these adapters (RTL8127AF TXA403, with SFP+ cage); I haven't properly benchmarked it yet.

There's no driver support on macOS, and for Linux you'd need a bleeding edge kernel. Just trying to physically connect it (along with a connected SFP28 transceiver) to my Mac's Thunderbolt port using an external PCIe-to-TB adapter, macmon tells me a power draw of around 4.3 W, so it's not significantly less for half the bandwidth, but the card doesn't get hot at all.

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kohlschuetter 140 days ago
Very nice tip, thank you!

I measure around +11W idle. While running a speed test, I read ca. +15W.

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usagisushi 140 days ago
Thanks for the measurements! 15W under load definitely justifies those massive heatsinks.

I’m looking forward to your writeup on the RTL8127AF as well. Your blog is awesome!

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consp 140 days ago
Plus 1-2.5w per active cable. You need the heatsinks as the cx4 cards expect active airflow, and active transceivers as well.

I have a 10gbit dual port card in a Lenovo mini pc. There is no normal way to get any heat out of there so I put a 12v small radial fan in there as support. It works great at 5v: silent and cool. It is a fan though so might not suit your purpose.

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ZenDroid 140 days ago
Do you mean active Thunderbolt cable? Short Thunderbolt cables (0.8m) are passive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/y5uokj/commen...

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userbinator 139 days ago
Active Ethernet cables.
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