I was thinking you may have had a slot with a drive in you could move to a usb header but of course ITX boards don't have the luxury of extra slots
Can you swap out your motherboard to one with a TB3 port? There are a few ITX ones out there that do according o my brief googlage. The QNAP TB3 10Gb NIC is a good bit of kit, in my experience no problems with it making the most of 10Gbit even when attached to a TB3 dock. Also no issues with compatibility with a couple of different DAC cables I’ve tried (ubiquiti and a no-name “ubnt compatible” one) and an intel 10Gb LC SFP.
I did look at that, but the combined cost of that NIC and replacement motherboard is pushing me £200+ past my planned budget. I have the 5gbe qnap usb 3 dongle as an interim measure, at half the price, which may be enough for now. Not sure on the read/write speeds on a pair of 8tb reds in RAID1, but I don't think I'll see more than 300-400 MB/sec. I went with the mikrotik switch to keep costs down - web and network access for the kids pcs etc.. will stay on the modem router for the time being. The annoying thing is that I got let down in the sfp to 10gbe rj45 transceiver so every thing but that will be here on Monday.
I don't have the time right now to read the whole thread, but have you read about Nbase-T? Upto 10GBe over Cat5e, plus there's 2.5 and 5GBe too, may suit your needs more, and the cabling will be far easier!
The issue with 10gbe over RJ45 is the cost of the hardware (currently) a mixed port switch will cost me £80 more and offer less 10GB ports than the Mikrotik unit. You can buy SFP+ NICs for £20-£40, whereas the RJ45 equivalents will cost £150 more. £20 per DAC cable isn't a big deal, and you can get SFP+ to RJ45 transceivers for £40-£50 if you shop around. My overal cost is £300, give or take the cost of a pint. Going for the mixed port switch and a RJ45 NIC would add a couple of hundred to my budget. Getting a switch with more ports... ouch. My wife is tolerant of my tech obsession but there are limits. The 5gbe USB dongle is the QNAP QNA-UC5G1T, which is RJ45 to USB 3 or C, so I only currently need one transceiver, as my immediate needs are increased speed to my NAS. I could have foregone the switch entirely, and went SFP+ NIC >RJ45 Transceiver >QNAP dongle >PC, but want the ability quickly add more to the network as I see fit. I also have the option to run MM fibre and generally play with a new toy.
Quick update - using the QNAP QSW-308-1C and the QNA-UC5G1T 5GbE USB 3 adapter, I'm seeing writes around the 270-300MB/s range. They were a lot worse - bouncing between 160 and 180MB/s, until I added a pair of 500GB SSDs as a read/write cache, so I guess the HDDs were the bottleneck. According to DHL, my nvme-to-pcie adapter should arrive tomorrow. So I can tear down my rig and try a 10gbe nic inside the chassis. My cheap nics are SFP+ cards but I do have one RJ45 transceiver. I was about to go fishing on ebay for the Asus 10gbe nic because there's a 20% discount code. As ever, the scum at Ebuyer have it on their ebay store for £127, which would be £102 after the 20% discount. You can buy it on Amazon for £96!
Well, my adapter was supposed to arrive today, but I got a text from DHL at 5:30pm that said "Address information needed. Contact DHL". Nothing else. No number to call, no link. Nowt. You just sent me a frikkin text to say you don't have my address? Call me, you muppets! Hang on, you accepted an international delivery from Dubai to the UK without a destination address? Why does my tracking confirmation email have the tracking number AND my address on it? Or is this just the latest way one of your drivers fiddles the system when his dinner is getting cold and he doesn't fancy completing his round?
I think we have a winner. It can work both ways, one of the Supermarket delivery drivers doesn't like the dark so we can book a late night 50p delivery and often get a call to have it arrive in the pricey delivery slot. #littlewin
The NVME to PCIE x16 adapter arrived. It's installed and it works. I'm running a HP NC253SFP 10G NIC in the adapter, just to test things - I'd prefer a smaller single port RJ45 10GbE card for a more permanent solution, but I wasn't about to splurge a further £80 - £100 without knowing if the adapter would work. The HP card isn't full length and stops short of the fan intake on my 1080 Ti FE and GPU temps are unchanged (one thing I was a little concerned about. Still getting 270-300MB/s writing large media files , but testing cached data for max throughput saw 650-700MB/s. I'm calling that a win, because I'm not jonesing for that £250 Asus Flex ATX board any more. Potato pic: Don't focus on the errant fan cable - it's just temporary
OK, after initial proof of concept, I swapped out the nic for a Qnap QXG-10G1T, mainly because it was super cheap on Amazon Warehouse. Also, the SFP nics are fine but RJ45 transceivers get damned toasty in use. Gotta say, I love Warehouse deals - according to the description, this card had a 1cm x 1cm cosmetic blemish on the PCB and the packaging is heavily damaged. It was pristine. All of it. Even the box. Nice little card too, and it comes with Std, LP and Qnap NAS-specific PCI brackets and even a CAT 6A cable. We're done here. Nothing more to see.
I've had very mixed results with warehouse deals. The last thing I ordered was a pair of brackets to wall mount two Sonos Play 1s which were 'Used - Very Good'. They came without any fittings to either (a) mount the play 1s to the brackets or (b) mount the brackets to the wall. One of the brackets was bent beyond use or repair (god know how that was achieved as they're pretty thick metal) and the other had lost all the felt padding to protect the backs of the play 1s. All that to save about £3 on the new price. Needless to say they went back.
I once ordered a My Little Pony Monopoly game (for myself of course) and it came in Polish. Other than that, nothing but resounding success with warehouse deals, tatty packaging at worst. The best bit is that the invoice says nothing to indicate it's anything other than a new item, so you're covered with manufacturer warranties where relevant.
Yeah, not that either. It feels more of a layered response. Like a cake. I can see the cake but the layers are hidden. And the cake is a lie.
