[SOLD] Mellanox ConnectX-3 MCX354A 40/56Gb Dual Port -- $15/ea shipped

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arglebargle

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Jul 15, 2018
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Sun/Oracle branded Mellanox dual port VPI 40Gb cards @ $15/ea, these cross-flash to standard Mellanox firmware easily. I've purchased 4 from this vendor over the last few months for ~$20/ea. You may try to haggle down to $10/board, though $15 shipped is a ridiculously good price already

Sun 7046442 Dual Port 40GB/SEC QDR HBA | eBay

Seller is accepting offers of $13/ea for multiple cards.

You'll want QSFP <> SFP+ adapters to connect these to your 10GbE equipment:

Mellanox 655902-001 655874-B21 HP QSFP/SFP ADAPTER 656541864054 | eBay
 
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TedB

Active Member
Dec 2, 2016
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Great deal, however shipping at 250 usd to Europe kills it for me :(
 

arglebargle

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Jul 15, 2018
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Thanks for this! Offered the seller $10, he countered with $13. In for half a dozen.
High five! I'll update the first post. These are great boards, and at $13 + $12-14/SFP+ adapter they're still $15 cheaper than the dual 10Gb parts.
 

KpoTz

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Apr 10, 2019
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Hello, anyone who bought this - can you save the original firmware and share it, please. Thank you.
 

arglebargle

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Jul 15, 2018
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The original listing says that there were 31 for sale but the auction sold 14. Might be prudent to message the seller and ask if he's got more.
These sellers sometimes get spooked when they start selling all available stock over 15 minutes. I wonder if their eBay inventory software automatically pulls a listing in case of a pricing error?

Hello, anyone who bought this - can you save the original firmware and share it, please. Thank you.
I have firmware for these dumped already, I'll upload later tonight.
 

Serhan

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Sep 22, 2017
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How often do you guys check the great deals STH thread? I check three times a day and still can not catch any of these deals. Is there a way to get automated messages for this kind of stuff?
 

AFisher

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Jun 2, 2017
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I havn't been able to get 10G Mellanox cards to work in my server 2016 servers, anyone else have them or the 40G cards working?
 

TedB

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Dec 2, 2016
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@MarcoP82 Thank for this interesting suggestion with reasonable shipping to Europe.

This is a CX354A-QCBT card that means FDR + 10GE. Do you know if it's possible to convert it into CX354A-FCBT by just flashing another firmware ? I am looking for FDR + 40GE cards.
 

arglebargle

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Jul 15, 2018
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@MarcoP82 Thank for this interesting suggestion with reasonable shipping to Europe.

This is a CX354A-QCBT card that means FDR + 10GE. Do you know if it's possible to convert it into CX354A-FCBT by just flashing another firmware ? I am looking for FDR + 40GE cards.
Most, if not all, of the CX354 cards have interchangeable firmware between QCBT, FCBT and whatever they're calling the 40Gb Ethernet variant. The only thing you can't do is flash between Pro and standard CX3 firmware (the hardware is different, we investigated at one point to see if it was possible.)

There may be some early revisions that can't cross flash, I think that was the case with the ConnectX-2's, but I haven't run into any myself and I've cross flashed almost a dozen HP, Sun and IBM 354A cards. You might go spelunking through the half dozen "Cross flashing Mellanox" threads in the Networking hardware forum for confirmation on this particular revision.

I can tell you with certainty that these HP's will cross flash (I own four):
HP (649281-B21,661685-001,656089-001) | eBay
 
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Rand__

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Mar 6, 2014
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The only thing you can't do is flash between Pro and standard CX3 firmware (the hardware is different, we investigated at one point to see if it was possible.)
Actually I think you can if you modify the sources which seem to be available somewhere. I only got a modded binary so have not done the modification myself, but it worked.
Never got to play around with the better RoCE version though, so not sure whether it really needs different hw or if its just a sw thing
 

arglebargle

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Jul 15, 2018
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Actually I think you can if you modify the sources which seem to be available somewhere. I only got a modded binary so have not done the modification myself, but it worked.
Never got to play around with the better RoCE version though, so not sure whether it really needs different hw or if its just a sw thing
Are you absolutely certain about this? We spent a few days in one of the threads doing stupid stuff like force writing pro firmware manually to the flash chip on non pro cards and never got anywhere (writing the flash is fine, and recovering later is fine but the cards never functioned after booting.) There is actually a silicon difference between the two if my memory serves, the pro controller has quite a bit more hardware acceleration available compared to the normal CX3 and the firmware just didn't function on the non-pro controller.

If you're thinking of hacking the image for the CX2 to enable RoCE v1 that's a different animal, I've done that and it works well enough.
 

Rand__

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Mar 6, 2014
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I am fairly sure it was cx3's and the cards where working fine with the exception that they didn't want to link up at 56GB/s and needed 40 instead.
Would have to look my old conversations to get details if you are interested. I think i might even be running some of the converted cards somewhere, would need to check psid's ;)