So it seems I'm getting an upgrade itch again and my eyes twitch when looking at 10Gb hardware - I tried it once four or five years ago but the prices were off-putting and the noise and power consumption was even more so.
A year on and NBASE-T still doesn't seem to be gaining a great deal of traction - the one (well, two) switch that netgear brought out is only an 8-port job which isn't enough for me, it still has a fan and NICs that support it are few and far between, Intel being conspicuously absent. If there's stuff in the pipeline I haven't heard of it yet.
So once more I'm looking at 10GbE. Probably only one of my subnets/VLANs needs to be 10Gb-capable but I think that still means it'd need to 10Gb pipe into my router, so I was wondering what sort of 10Gb card I might be able to fit in it.
Which brings me to the topic of the x710-DA2; this seems to be the most recent and one of the most efficient 10Gb cards on the market, with the specs that I can find (not on the Intel site I might add) listing a 5W operational consumption. My pfsense box currently sits in a passively cooled case - something I don't want to change unless I have to - so I'd like to be able to consider being able to chuck a 10Gb card in there without having to worry too much about heat. Does the x710-DA2 really use that little power and is chucking it in a passively cooled case going to cause temperature problems?
Additionally, BLinux's post here also lists the x520-DA2 at being only marginally more hungry at 7W (it's also marginally cheaper than the x710), is that also worth considering?
A year on and NBASE-T still doesn't seem to be gaining a great deal of traction - the one (well, two) switch that netgear brought out is only an 8-port job which isn't enough for me, it still has a fan and NICs that support it are few and far between, Intel being conspicuously absent. If there's stuff in the pipeline I haven't heard of it yet.
So once more I'm looking at 10GbE. Probably only one of my subnets/VLANs needs to be 10Gb-capable but I think that still means it'd need to 10Gb pipe into my router, so I was wondering what sort of 10Gb card I might be able to fit in it.
Which brings me to the topic of the x710-DA2; this seems to be the most recent and one of the most efficient 10Gb cards on the market, with the specs that I can find (not on the Intel site I might add) listing a 5W operational consumption. My pfsense box currently sits in a passively cooled case - something I don't want to change unless I have to - so I'd like to be able to consider being able to chuck a 10Gb card in there without having to worry too much about heat. Does the x710-DA2 really use that little power and is chucking it in a passively cooled case going to cause temperature problems?
Additionally, BLinux's post here also lists the x520-DA2 at being only marginally more hungry at 7W (it's also marginally cheaper than the x710), is that also worth considering?