Realtek 10 GbE USB Adapters might be on the way?

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panchovix

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Nov 11, 2025
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nexox said:
As I understand it the m.2 slot only supplies 3.3V, while a regular PCIe card expects 12V (and probably 5V, too early in the morning to check the documentation to be sure) so you'd still need aux power unless you find an M.2 slot adapter with a boost converter on it.
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Not him but you're correct. There are some adapters that do M2 to PCIe with SATA or Molex for aux power. I have been using ADT-Link for years for some of it's adapters, that are SATA powered or motherboard cable powered and no issues so far. And I use them mostly with GPUs, but the newer ones have 2 SATA connections which would be close to the theoretical max of 75W. Single one should be like 36W.

I.e. M.2 NVMe Extension Cable
and ADT PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVMe to x16 riser cable (SATA) or ADT PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVMe to x16 eGPU Adapter (Motherboard cable powered). At least I use a ton of these 2 (F43SG and F43SP).

I got them from aliexpress.
 
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blunden

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Jelle458

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I have been looking for this so badly, and finally a link, and it's not even a crazy price.
The motherboard in my gaming PC has a single 2.5G NIC, and I am getting at maximum 70MB/s so under 1G speeds. Before I upgraded the motherboard/CPU/RAM I was getting 1G speeds on my network.
Not sure why this ASUS motherboard (or the Intel 2.5G) don't want to give me more bandwith. I have 10G but my 10G switch does not support 2.5G so it goes down to 1G, I can see 1G being negotiated in the network card in Windows, but I get speeds more like 700mbps.

This USB should let me get 10G for my gaming PC, even if it is tested to only give me 9G it will be a massive upgrade! The PCIe slots are full (full customer water loop + vertical GPU) so no way to add a 10G PCIe card any more, been stuck on this slow NIC for over a year now, what a pain relief for 70 USD :)
 
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blunden

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Jelle458 said:
I have been looking for this so badly, and finally a link, and it's not even a crazy price.
The motherboard in my gaming PC has a single 2.5G NIC, and I am getting at maximum 70MB/s so under 1G speeds. Before I upgraded the motherboard/CPU/RAM I was getting 1G speeds on my network.
Not sure why this ASUS motherboard (or the Intel 2.5G) don't want to give me more bandwith. I have 10G but my 10G switch does not support 2.5G so it goes down to 1G, I can see 1G being negotiated in the network card in Windows, but I get speeds more like 700mbps.

This USB should let me get 10G for my gaming PC, even if it is tested to only give me 9G it will be a massive upgrade! The PCIe slots are full (full customer water loop + vertical GPU) so no way to add a 10G PCIe card any more, been stuck on this slow NIC for over a year now, what a pain relief for 70 USD :)
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Weird performance issue. Not sure what's going on there. A driver issue perhaps?

Is that 70 USD with tarrifs or something like that? Both the Diewu and the ZikeStor models are available for less than that, even with 25% VAT included.

For another 9 hours or so, the price I see for the ZikeStor $51.15 (including 25% VAT) + shipping on AliExpress. The Diewu is roughly $45 or so + shipping on Alibaba, I think. :)
 
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panchovix

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Just to add as info as well, I tested a big LLM (about 400GB size), offloading about 32GB via RPC from one PC to another.

Using a NIC at X1 3.0 (so like 6-7 Gbps max) netted me a lot more perf than the USB 10Gbps adapter, which effectively does 10Gbps.

I think, and pardon my ignorance, that is because latency? Prob PCIe has way less latency than USB.
 
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Jelle458

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Oct 4, 2022
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blunden said:
Weird performance issue. Not sure what's going on there. A driver issue perhaps?

Is that 70 USD with tarrifs or something like that? Both the Diewu and the ZikeStor models are available for less than that, even with 25% VAT included.

For another 9 hours or so, the price I see for the ZikeStor $51.15 (including 25% VAT) + shipping on AliExpress. The Diewu is roughly $45 or so + shipping on Alibaba, I think. :)
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I saw it on CyberMonday sale at 61.95 USD, and the shipping is 7.54 USD, so we are close to the 70 USD. I honestly didn't go bargain hunting. I have been hunting a USB 10G adapter for a very long time. I saw one in stock and pressed purchase.
It is likely something else out there is cheaper, but man I am going crazy about these slow speeds. EVERYTHING else in my house is 10G, now my own gaming PC i spend the most time on can FINALLY have (almost) the same speeds.
Only sad part is that delivery is between 24. December and 7. January. Gotta wait until after christmas.

panchovix said:
Just to add as info as well, I tested a big LLM (about 400GB size), offloading about 32GB via RPC from one PC to another.

Using a NIC at X1 3.0 (so like 6-7 Gbps max) netted me a lot more perf than the USB 10Gbps adapter, which effectively does 10Gbps.

I think, and pardon my ignorance, that is because latency? Prob PCIe has way less latency than USB.
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Do you have this adapter? Sucks if you didn't get the near 9G promised, man I almost regret it now. Can't be worse than what I already have though.
I have like 30x 10G NICs mixed SFP+ and RJ45 but they do not fit my system with vertical GPU and full customer water cooling. Just no space at all, even if I take off the bracket and just let the card hang loose in the PCIe slot it's too tall because of the vertical GPU mount.
I went as far as buying an M.2 to 10G PCIe thing also, but the vertical GPU is blocking my access to the M.2 connector which is behind a heatsink on the motherboard, I can't unscrew the heatsink with the GPU mounted, and to unmount the GPU I have to take out all the water (blue dyed, colors EVERYTHING) and I would be looking into a multi-day job at that point which I just don't feel like doing anymore.
Next time I upgrade I think I'll go with something easier to manage, like air cooling.
The temps are nice though, and the overclocking is no doubt better than on air.
 
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panchovix

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@Jelle458 I got this adapter and got the 9-10Gbps provided. Just that latency via USB for ethernet is higher than via a NIC or ethernet itself on the board, if I understand correctly.
 
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Jelle458

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Oct 4, 2022
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Uh I hope the latency isn't too high. I did not even think about that. Sometimes I game online in high FPS stuff like CS2. If it adds latency there it won't be usable. I could run 2 connections but I don't think the system will know which to use for what software for the lowest latency.

Well when I get it I'd have to test. Thank you!
 
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Greg_E

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There are compact cards from Supermicro as well, I have a small pile of them installed in my HP T740 computers. Not as short as the above, but as short as an x16 slot, they are x520 based, but I believe Supermicro also has short x710 based cards with dual SFP+ cages. I've been told that the older x520 could be slowing thigs down due to the older PCIe standard so moving to x710 is probably worth doing if you don't already have a bunch of these.

I'd like to hear more user experiences with the USB 10g devices, I recently stepped my laptop up to a Realtek 2.5g USB device from Wavelink. I'd need a device with power pass through and a C port if this is possible.
 
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