[Galanwe]

10G DACs are no cheaper than cat6, which is perfectly fine for 10G at most practical distances. Considering the target audience of these cards it seems pretty obvious to me that letting users "just buy a cat 6 cable" is miles more reasonable than having them buy a transceiver or DAC.

As for allowing to switch to fiber, that just seems orthogonal again to what these USB NICs are for, not to mention the SFP+ itself is probably more expensive than the NIC shown here...

[Fnoord]

DACs are very cheap (second hand and AliExpress) and they never use much W. If both machines are near each other though (which a DAC cable implies) and both run Linux and both support Thunderbolt, you might be better off with a direct ethernet over TB connection. Whether macOS supports such, I don't know.

The other side will then also need a low power NIC (of which fiber and DAC over SFP+ are less power hungry). What this article doesn't mention, is that there are also a lot of PCIe NICs on the market which aren't power hungry (RTL8127), as well as RTL8261C for switches/routers.

I've seen low power RTL NICs with SFP+ on it, too (example: [1]). With SFP+, you'll have a lot more versatility. DAC and SFP+ fiber are very cheap, btw. Especially second hand they go for virtually nothing. I have 10 SFP+ fiber lying around here doing nothing which I got for a few EUR each.

For me as European with high energy prices and solar energy gotten the beat next year (in NL), this is all very interesting.

There's a couple of good reasons why to opt for fiber in the home. You keep the energy between the different groups separated which can help. I also find fiber very easy to get through walls, allowing me to have multiple fiber connections through walls (currently I use 1x fiber + 1x ethernet for PoE possibilities from fusebox).

With all above being said, AQC100S is low power and does not get very hot. You can get these with SFP+ and PCIe/TB. They've been available for a while.

[1] https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005011733192115.html (no vouching for, just first hit on search)

[ZekeSulastin]

I just wish someone would come out with a PCIE 4x1 capable card with SFP - my main desktop’s non-GPU expansion slots are all 4x1 electrically and even the one you linked is a 3x2. As far as I can tell the only 4x1 cards available are RTL8127 or AQC113 RJ45 ones :(

I suppose an NVME riser is also an option, albeit janky.

[jburgess777]

There are RTL8127 cards with SFP+, e.g. https://www.lekuo.com/product_view.php?id=659

edit: on looking closer, that still seems to be an x4 card.

[namibj]

Says electrically 3x2.

[jburgess777]

Right, but I don’t think a x2 slot exists so hence being physically a x4 card. If you had an open ended x1 slot you might be able to run as PCIe v4 x1.

[wpm]

I can also buy a roll of CAT6 and a few dozen dollars in tools and RJ-45 connectors and make my own custom length cables.

[gsich]

Also SFPs are always a gamble. Might work, might not, you have multiple options, meanwhile with copper RJ-45 you are guaranteed that a link will be established.