Help PLEASE I really am about to lose it.

[Falloutboy]

I have two computers.
One ASUS Rampage 5 Extreme Edition 10 Running an Intel 6900K and an ASUS X399 Prime A running an AMD 1900x, both machines run Windows 10 64Bit Professional, 32 gigs of ram and a Raid 6 Array.

The problem is as follows.
I recently purchased two ASUS 10Gbe nics, plonked one in each PC connected the cable, set them up and they wouldn't ping each other.. Both cards would talk at 1G when connected to a 1G Switch no problems at all but connected at any speed via a cable hooking the two of them together and I tried cat 5E and cat 6A pass throughs as the cards support MDIX - Absolutely Zero, couldn't pinch each other or anything. Installed the latest drivers from the Aquantia site - both cards reported no cable connected - no matter what cable I connected. I have returned them to be checked out.

In the mean time I brought two Mellenox ConnectX2s and a cisco SFP.
Repeated the Installation and setup process on the R5E1o - no problems.
Installed the card on the X399 for it to be found and report error code 43 - this would be the last time I would see the card mentioned. Deleted the driver and rebooted hoping it was just an initial boot problem. Checked device manager - no card, hardware re detect - no card. Boot into the latest Ubuntu - no card.

Swapped cards between the two PC's, R5E10 detected the card from the X399 with no problems, X399 - booted up - no card.

I have been through bios on the X399 with a fine tooth comb and can see nothing that would stop the card from coming up. I do note also that on the R5E10 I get a PXE boot message when the board starts up - i get no such message on the X399.

My only conclusions can be at the moment that the X399 chipset has a problem or the ASUS motherboard BIOS has a problem or there is something that I am simply not seeing here - can anybody help me out with this?

Someone mentioned updating the firmware on the Mellenox cards ( they are actually HP branded Mellenox cards ) but I wouldn't have the faintest idea how - or even what firmware they currently have - this also does not explain why both cards work in the R5E10 but can't be seen at all in the X399.

HELP!!!!

 

[i386]

I have a pc with x399 and a cx-2 and it works fine.

Firmware on the cx-2 up to date?
Bios up to date?
Did you try bios defaults?

 

[oddball]

Head over to Mellanox's website and get the firmware utilities. They can probe the hardware and detect cards directly and allow you to manipulate the firmware on those cards.

Until you have the correct firmware on the card the drivers won't recognize it as a legitimate card. You need to update the firmware.

 

[SGN]

Is the cable straight or crossed?

 

[oddball]

Shouldn't matter with a DAC, there isn't a concept of straight or cross-over cable.

Seems the issue is with the computer recognizing it correct? Both cards work in the first machine, and both cards get a link when hooked to a switch. The issue is with machine B. Or am I missing something?

 

[William]

The ASUS 10Gbe nics use the Aquantia chip. I have 3 of the ones that come with the X399 Extreme and one of the earlier models with the red heat sink. ASUS even sent me ones that had updated firmware, to do this your nic needs to be sent back to ASUS.

Mega problems with all of them. My switch is the D-Link DXS-1210-12TC that Patrick reviewed.

I did need to update the firmware on the switch, but that didn't fix my problems.

Some work arounds that would work some of the times are.

Auto settings would not work. On the switch set it to 10G and full duplex, set the nic to 10G. This worked some of the times, often after workstation restarts I would loose connections which had me going back to the switch and force those settings again. Round and round we go.

Direct connect from the workstation to the second workstation/NAS would work fine.

I do not care for the Aquantia based Nic's, Synology and QNAP have them also on lower end units.

Sometimes I think its the switch and using another manufacture "might" solve this problem, I don't know. I could also be the X399 platform. Either way I gave up on these Nic's.

 

[zkrr01]

I have used quite a few 10G Aquantia NIC's and have never had any problems. You state they work fine when they are direct connect. That would indicate the NIC's are working. It sounds more like some type of conflict between the NIC's and the switch. I have never used D-Link switch since we always used Netgear. We have not had any problems with Netgear and the Aquantia NIC's.