10Gb Ethernet from an M.2 slot! A neat upgrade for £71

Affordable 10Gb Ethernet – Turn your M.2 slot into ultra-fast wired connectivity for £71

10Gb Ethernet is a fantastic upgrade for any home networking setup. File transfers of over 1GB/s your home network is a big deal for anyone with a home server. That said, 10Gb Ethernet networking infrastructure tends to be expensive. Beyond that only the most expensive of motherboards feature 10Gb Ethernet. Thankfully, PC builders now have an affordable 10Gb Ethernet upgrade option, one that uses your system’s spare M.2 slots.

On Ali Express, an IOCREST M.2 to PCI 10Gb Ethernet LAN networking adaptor is now available for £71. This product is based on the AQtion AQC107 controller from Aquantia. This model is backwards compatible with 5Gb, 2.5Gb, 1Gb and other ethernet standards. The specific model that we chose also features a black PCB, which will look great in most systems.

Using a ribbon cable, this adapter card connects one of your PCIe slots to an M.2 card slot. This card can be used in x4 PCIe M.2 slots that are PCIe 2.0 or faster. The card itself also supports Windows, Windows Server, Linux, and VMware.

Earlier this year, we reviewed ASUS’ ROG Rapture GT-AXE16000 router, which includes two 10GbE ports.

With support for PCIe 2.0 M.2 slots and Windows OS’ as old as Windows 7 and Windows Server 2012, this M.2 to to 10GbE adaptor can upgrade almost any modern system. Moving forward, we expect 10GbE networking to becoming increasingly common. Faster broadband packages are becoming available to consumers, delivering beyond Gb speeds. This is making faster home networking solutions more commonplace, so much so that 2.5Gb and 5Gb are becoming commonplace on new motherboards and networking products.

You can join the discussion on the availability of affordable 10Gb Ethernet M.2 adapters on the OC3D Forums.