I originally bought this motherboard to use it as a 6 port 10Gb unmanaged switch and also it can be used as a server to host a file server/VMs/firewall etc. After spending several weeks, I just found that easiest way to get that is simply installing linux (mine is debian) and enabling a bridge:
www.cyberciti.biz
then everything else works out of the box with perfect line speed of 9.41Gb/sec as measure from iperf. I was not able to measure total agg speed but this is already more than good enough for me. It is amazing to see how performant the bridge implementation in linux, quite amazing I must say.
Just wanted to share what I tried so far:
- PfSense on Hyper-V: I spent 2 weeks on online guides to configure a bridge on pfsense but it is too complicated and couldn't figure out. Pfsense, being a firewall is not designed to run a switch.
- Windows Bridge on Windows Server 2016: This is a built-in bridge functionality in windows and has been there for decades but it looks MS didn't update the implementation and its performance is horrible.
- VyoS pn Hyper-V: This also took me several weeks to make it work and got lots of help from @Marsh. VyOS was an overkill for switch purposes as it designed to be as router. I was missing some crucial steps in hyper-v configuration which prevented me to make VyOS running on Hyper-V. After all that, I must say VyOS didn't work good as I was limited to ~5 - 6 Gbit/s. My guess is that this is due to the inefficiency of running VyOS on Hyper-V.
I think a better set up would be using Proxmox instead of Debian but I am fine with using VirtualBox on Debian.

Debian Linux: Configure Network Interfaces As A Bridge / Network Switch
My server has five Ethernet ports and one ADSL port. How do I setup IPv4 software bridge using Debian Linux operating systems so that the rest of five ports act as a network switch?
then everything else works out of the box with perfect line speed of 9.41Gb/sec as measure from iperf. I was not able to measure total agg speed but this is already more than good enough for me. It is amazing to see how performant the bridge implementation in linux, quite amazing I must say.
Just wanted to share what I tried so far:
- PfSense on Hyper-V: I spent 2 weeks on online guides to configure a bridge on pfsense but it is too complicated and couldn't figure out. Pfsense, being a firewall is not designed to run a switch.
- Windows Bridge on Windows Server 2016: This is a built-in bridge functionality in windows and has been there for decades but it looks MS didn't update the implementation and its performance is horrible.
- VyoS pn Hyper-V: This also took me several weeks to make it work and got lots of help from @Marsh. VyOS was an overkill for switch purposes as it designed to be as router. I was missing some crucial steps in hyper-v configuration which prevented me to make VyOS running on Hyper-V. After all that, I must say VyOS didn't work good as I was limited to ~5 - 6 Gbit/s. My guess is that this is due to the inefficiency of running VyOS on Hyper-V.
I think a better set up would be using Proxmox instead of Debian but I am fine with using VirtualBox on Debian.