IO CREST 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express PCI-E Network Interface Card 10/100/1000/25000 Mbps RJ45 LAN SI-PEX24059

This is the only only 10Gb PCIe x1 NIC I could find but it works great so far. This works out of the box on Windows 11. I was pleasantly surprised to see a significant decrease in my loaded upload latency compared to the onboard NIC I've been using. It dropped from around 50ms down to 3ms. For some reason my loaded download latency increased from around 3ms to 11ms with this card but that's a trade-off I'm happy to make. With this I'm finally able to take full advantage of my 5Gb fiber internet.

installed it to add the 10gb to my macbook, get full 10gb speed out of the box, when I did a test using iperf3 and openspeedtestI like the build quality, the unit does get warm, but not hot. the design where both cable on the same side of the unit is odd.

Works great with my MacBook Pro M3.

The M.2 portion of the 10g card fell off inside the housing and shorted. Bad design, as the screw holding the m.2 board to the carrier had failed due to a bad soldier joint. The unit is dead now and I do not recommend others buy this.

Only reason I'm knocking off a star at all is the product doesn't explicitly match the advertised photo this time. I've bought two of these previously, and received the version in the photo: half height, quarter length, black PCB. What I received this time was half height, half length, red PCB. So, if you're carefully planning your build's interior aesthetic, you may get a svelte, miniature black card, or you may get a larger, flashy red card. I'm sure I'll find a happy use for it, as I'm really just buying a few extras because the price is good.That said, these Marvell Acquantia AQC107 chips perform just fine, they give me up to 1.09GB/s transfer speeds from my NAS, consistently. Just replace the thermal pad on it prior to deploying, as the stock pad is kind of trash quality and will let the chipset overheat, causing throttling.

[UPDATE 7-6-2020]This card does indeed work as advertised in Linux. I was able to easily get 290MB/s throughput between two Linux computers via the Zyxel XGS1210-12 managed switch that has two 2.5gb ports. One computer has this PCIe card and the other is a laptop with a USB3.0 to 2.5gb ethernet adapter (Cable Creation) based on the Realtek chips.[/UPDATE]I am waiting on a Zyxel XGS1210-12 switch to arrive which has 2.5 gigabit ports to test the max speed of this card, but until then I can confirm this card works at least up to a gigabit throughput in Linux. BUT, the trick is you have to install a driver and, while easy if you know the steps, it is not something that was easy for me to *find* a up to date tutorial on as someone who's never compiled a driver before.There are a lot of outdated driver tutorials. I found one that works and am sharing it here.Saying that, please note these steps are ONLY for Linux Mint 19.3 which is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS which is based on Debian. So these steps may not be required in future releases. Both Ubuntu and Linux Mint are now at version 20 with kernel 5.4. I have not had a chance yet to test this card with those. But I will. I'm evaluating Linux Mint 20 in a virtual machine and will upgrade at a later date. Linux Mint says they will have an updater from 19.3 soon.If you are NOT using a Debian based Linux these specific steps will NOT work, but should be adaptable to other distros such as RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, Manjaro, OpenSuse, etc. with a little tweaking. It is my experience that a recompile of the entire kernel from source is not necessary. Only compile the driver and then add it. The Realtek script download does this. But there are some things you have to install first. (see steps below)If you are using FreeBSD you're going to have a difficult time because there are no drivers provided by Realtek for that operating system (at least from what I can see.) BUT, you may want to look into using the Windows driver in FreeBSD by using ndisgen or ndiswrapper. I know NOTHING about using those, but have read this is a workaround when no drivers are provided for a Unix-like OS such as FreeBSD. At least now you have a starting point for Google search.Steps to compile and install the driver for this card and others based on the Realtek r8125 chip:1. Download the r8125 driver for PCIe cards (not USB) from Realtek's website and unzip it. Make note of where you unzip it. Most browsers save to the Downloads folder of your home path.2. From a command line prompt (aka terminal) do the following:2a. cd {path to unzipped driver download}2b. sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential2c. sudo ./autorun.shThe autorun.sh file is included with the Realtek driver, in case you're curious. It's not part of Linux.After the autorun.sh file finishes the driver will be installed. Be patient. After it's done installing then the card may take a few seconds or a minute to get an IP address. In my experience a reboot of the computer was not required. It just started working on its own.The DOWN side to this is that the driver is only installed for the current kernel, so when an update to a newer kernel happens you'll have to do these steps again. (Unless the driver is in the new kernel.)There is a way to automatically compile and install the driver whenever the kernel is updated and that is called DKMS. I'm not familiar enough with it to provide notes on its use. But if you want to investigate on your own I encourage it. Gotta try to learn, right?I also have found a way to test speed of Ethernet ports using two computers. It is preferred, but not required, to connect both computers to a switch for the test, but it is possible to direct connect between two computers, assign IP address to each card, and test that way.SPEED TESTSpeed test (both computers running Linux. Probably any version of Linux or even FreeBSD as nc and dd are usually already present)We will presume the first computer's IP address is 192.168.1.100.Step 1: If using a firewall open a port to test with. I use 12345 in these steps. Use what you prefer. Open a port on both computers (presuming firewall is on both) because you may want to test in both directions. This test only tests one way at a time. Sometimes I get different speeds (on other adapters, specifically USB Ethernet) so it is good to test both ways.Step 2: On first computer that will be the "server" type this at the command linenc -vvnlp 12345 >/dev/nullAfter pressing enter the computer will sit patiently waiting for something on that port.Step 3: On the second computer that will be the "client" type this at the command linedd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1K | nc -vvn 192.168.1.100 12345The test will begin but you will not see a status until the test is done and it will report the speed.Be patient.This tests throughput of a 1 gigabyte data stream. If you want more change the count to a higher number like 2K or 3K or less like 250, 500, 750. Doing a longer or shorter stream has not, in my experience, resulted in any better or worse speeds than a gigabyte of data.Once the test is done and the speed is shown (1 gigabit is usually about 118MB/s) you will need to press Ctrl-C to break out of the command and it will return the terminal prompt on both computers.To do the test the other direction, just run the server command on the other computer and vise versa. Note, you'll need to know the IP address of the other computer and use that instead of 192.168.1.100.After I get a 2.5Gb switch I'll test with that and show results here.

Works well. I got the driver directly from the Realtek site.

Plug and play with unRAID (tested with 7.0). Achieves full throughput