i wish 10gbe was more of a thing. i bullt a 10gbe server 2 years ago and hate the idea of building a system without 10gbe. anyways i've been struggling with the same idea. one thought is going with the asrock fatal1ty z270 which has thunderbolt 3, then using a sanlink TB3 to 10gbe.
10Gb/sec in ITX w GPU
- Thread starter Bpeezy
- Start date
But then you have the added expense ($800+) of an external thunderbolt 3 adaptor. Inefficient!
I'm currently in talks with a supplier who might be able to make some adapters to work with an existing 3M x4 PCIE extender cable. Theoretically this means we could plug this cable into a free m.2 slot, and then mount an internal 10gbe expansion card (or any other x4 card) in our SFF rigs.
Don't forget about Infiniband cards. There are plenty of older pcie 2.0 x8 20gb/s cards, that would fill the role cheaply. Passive switches are not that expensive either.
Promise makes a single one that costs 300. So yeah not ideal but not crazy expensive. I'm all for the adapter to m.2 please let me know as I'm interested, but it's also gonna make small builds more tricky. Where would you put that in a a4-sfx? At least the tb3 adapter can allow you to roll 10gbe at home and still have a small package to travel with.
this looks intresting.... anyone know anything about it ?
http://adtlink.com/index.php/photo/index/id/33.html
http://adtlink.com/index.php/photo/index/id/33.html
How many lanes do the m.2 wifi slots found on itx boards have?
Pcie 3.0 x4?
Pcie 3.0 x4?
I have a mITX motherboard (Asus A97 I-plus) with a Nvidia GPU and a 10GB Nic (Asus XG-C100C), using an extender for the M2 slot at the rear of MB, and all works great.
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITXac/index.asp has TB3. Get an Aikito Node 3 or a SEL Express or even a http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_RS6361A_overview.htm and put a 10 GbE card inside?
The SEL Express you could possibly put under the ITX case easily.
The SEL Express you could possibly put under the ITX case easily.
how thick is the cable? o_o kinda curious, since their images suggest they're pretty thick ._.
I have been playing with the idea for a while (even a 40G card could work, the box provides x4 PCIe v3.0 connection, so 25-30G should be fine), but to me it looks like the tb3 to pcie connection is not transparent. sometimes even when users swap videocards it does not work. so drivers can be an issue. but Akitio, Sonnet and some other companies sell Nx10G tb cards.
to me e.g. the Akitio Node lite is just too expensive in the $250 range to buy one only for the networking idea. I am not a gamer, so would not use it with a GPU anyway.
Pretty thin, enough to be folded in the space between the motherboard and the case
So, I ordered this cable: http://adtlink.com/index.php/photo/index/id/32.html
It arrived today. Seems pretty legit! Haven't tested it yet, but will report back in when I do. The cable is 1.85mm thick.
It arrived today. Seems pretty legit! Haven't tested it yet, but will report back in when I do. The cable is 1.85mm thick.
Did you
Did you test it yet ?So, I ordered this cable: http://adtlink.com/index.php/photo/index/id/32.html
It arrived today. Seems pretty legit! Haven't tested it yet, but will report back in when I do. The cable is 1.85mm thick.
Unfortunately haven't had time to test the functionality yet, but here is a simple fitment test to see if you can use a spare m.2 slot to mount a 2nd card next to a single slot GPU. Looks like you can, if you have 11mm clearance between the motherboard and backplate. That's a big if though.
This measurement was 11mm.
You could conceivably mount a single slot x4 card next to a single slot x16 GPU in an SFF system with a spare m.2 slot!
