[RachelF]

Every PCIe 10G ethernet card I've seen has a heatsink on it, sometimes covering the entire card or even have little fans on the heatsink.

Expecting it to work full time in a laptop is a bit of a stretch of the heat dissipation budget.

Also, the laptop he is working has the AMD FP8 chipset - depending on how the ports are setup, he might only get 10G USB, if the ports are allocated to video instead.

[timschmidt]

New chips from Realtek burn < 2W for the chip and < 3-4W for the board: https://www.servethehome.com/cheap-10gbe-realtek-rtl8127-nic...

[numpad0]

4W is TDP for some of Pi-style mini computers. Lots of them have fans.

[timschmidt]

Pi 4 and 5 both idle around 3W. But a Pi 5 can pull up to 16W with a USB peripheral, full CPU load, and decoding 4k video. The Pi 4 / 5 will run OKish without a heatsink at idle wattages, but thermal throttle quickly if you attempt to do something intensive.

These realtek 10gbe chips are more in the range of the Pi Zero class machines (0.5W idle, 2W loaded) which don't often come with heatsinks though they might benefit from them. If it has a good thermal connection to a good thick ground plane on the PCB, that's worth almost as much as a passive heatsink on the top of the chip.

usb-c < card edge < motherboard integrated in terms of how much heat can be transfered through the connection. Where the motherboard would have the largest ground plane to soak up heat from such an IC and dissipate it passively. The usb-c module is worst case by being a small enclosed box with very little thermal connection through the plastic insulating housing. An aluminum enclosure might dissipate enough heat passively to make it pleasant to use.

[devmor]

> The Pi 4 / 5 will run OKish without a heatsink at idle wattages, but thermal throttle quickly if you attempt to do something intensive.

Even with a heatsink and fan, I had to upgrade to a higher quality set to keep Jellyfin from thermal throttling a Pi5 while transcoding 4K video.

[merpkz]

Raspberry Pi 4 doesn't need a fan. People just like to put them on because because micromanaging CPU temperature is part of the hobby for some. Yes it might throttle its CPU speed when going full tilt for some time, but lets be real how many workloads require poor Raspberry Pi to be loaded 100% for prolonged periods of time?

[rjzzleep]

If it throttles CPU it means by definition means that a fan helps. Also constant heat increases failure rate.

[msh]

Running plex/jellyfin :)

[userbinator]

...and yet they're still covered by a huge heatsink.

[mystifyingpoi]

To add perspective, an old-school 7805 voltage regulator dissipating just 1 watt is already impossibly hot to hold with bare hand (as me how I know). So 3-4 watts on a small module will make it noticeably hot.

[drnick1]

They aren't huge at all, the new RTL cards are tiny. I wish 2-port versions were available for a home server upgrade.

[jfb]

Yeah, 10Gb ethernet runs hot. I just rewired the house with 10Gb (we have 8Gb FTTP) and it's kind of upsetting how hot my Thunderbolt dock gets.

[Gigachad]

I looked in to it and it seemed like 10gbit was much better over fiber. Ended up deciding that 2.5gbit is plenty. The 2.5 gear is significantly cheaper and runs cool.

[jfb]

Yeah, I use DAC for the desktop and fibre between floors. It's just the Mac's desktop that uses RJ45 copper.

[drnick1]

> I looked in to it and it seemed like 10gbit was much better over fiber.

Yes, except that most devices use Ethernet. So, at the end of the day, you still need Ethernet cables unless you want to deal with an additional switch or converter in every room.

[Dylan16807]

> every room

I disagree with that for two reasons. First, my central switch is probably capable of both copper and fiber. Second, how many wired devices do you have spread around your house? Let's say I have an above average number of devices: a router, a NAS, two access points, and three desktops. Router, NAS, and one access point can all be adjacent to the switch and avoid any conversion hassle. The desktops are using fiber so no conversion hassle there. That leaves one copper cable or converter needed for the other access point.

[eqvinox]

Fiber/10Gbase-*R is Ethernet too. Please say copper/RJ45/base-T when you mean copper/RJ45/base-T.

[sekh60]

Thank you.

[Gigachad]

Indeed, that's largely why I decided 10gbit at home isn't really worth it. The current 10gbit ethernet stuff is expensive and power hungry, the enterprise stuff is hard to use on consumer gear. And the only real use case is super fast access to a nas.

[kstrauser]

I got it solely because our ISP bumped our home fiber to 10Gb and it would’ve hurt my soul for the router to be slower than that. And hey, if you’ve already got a router with 10Gb ports available and ready to go…

[DrPhish]

I redid everything that matters in my house/homelab with DAC cables for exactly that reason. Order of magnitude difference in watts and heat

[polski-g]

So the entire Framework card's casing should have been copper?