00:00If you've ever tried moving a big file across your home lab and watched that little progress bar crawl along
00:05at gigabit speeds, you already know the pain.
00:0810 gigabit networking used to cost a fortune, but honestly?
00:12It's gotten ridiculously cheap.
00:14I've been digging through listings for weeks, and today I'm sharing the top 5 10G Ethernet network cards for servers,
00:21including one that costs less than your lunch.
00:24Let's kick things off with the Intel X520DA1 with the 82599ES chip, and I still can't quite believe this price,
00:31$6.66.
00:33That's it.
00:35It's an SFP Plus card running on PCI Express X8, and the 82599ES controller is basically the gold standard for
00:4210G, it's been around forever, which means drivers are baked into pretty much every operating system you'd throw at it.
00:49Nearly 5,000 of these have sold with a 4.7 rating.
00:53If you're building a lab and just want to see if 10G is worth it for you, this is the
00:57lowest-risk way to find out.
00:59Next up is the dual-port Intel X520 pulled from Huawei RH1288 and 2288 servers, at $21.36.
01:09These are OEM cards, which basically means they came out of enterprise gear that got decommissioned, and that's a good
01:15thing.
01:16This hardware was built to run 24-7 in a data center.
01:20You get two 10G optical ports, so you can run link aggregation for 20G of bandwidth, or set up failovers
01:26so if one link drops, the other picks it up instantly.
01:30Highest rated on this list at 4.8.
01:33Now if you want the safest bet, the Lenovo-branded X520DA2 at $72.76 is the one.
01:41Yes, it's the most expensive card here, but you're paying for a card that's been validated in firmware matched by
01:46Lenovo,
01:47which matters a lot if you're dropping this into a ThinkServer or ThinkSystemBox.
01:51No compatibility headaches, no weird firmware locks.
01:55It's got a 4.9 rating from over 4,800 buyers, and honestly, when it's going into a machine you
02:01actually depend on, that peace of mind is worth every penny.
02:05Here's the one that's different, the AQC113 card at $62.52.
02:11Instead of fiber, this one gives you a regular RJ45 port, so you just plug in a CAT6 cable and
02:17you're done.
02:18No transceivers to buy, no fiber to run.
02:21It does full 10Gbps over copper, connects through PCIe X4, and it's got native driver support in Windows 10, 11,
02:29and server.
02:30If you're wiring up a desktop workstation or you already have Ethernet running through your walls, this is the practical
02:36choice.
02:37And finally, my personal favorite for value, the Intel X520DA2, model E10G42BTDA, at $18.62.
02:47Think about what you're getting here, two 10Gbps optical ports, the proven 82599ES chipset, on a PCIe card, for under
02:54$20.
02:56That's 20Gbps of potential throughput for the price of a couple of coffees.
03:01It's sitting at a 4.9 rating, and for anyone connecting a NAS to a switch or linking two servers
03:06directly together, this is genuinely hard to beat.
03:10All five of these are linked down in the description, and I've checked for the best prices I could find.
03:15If this helped you out, give it a like, and hit subscribe, I test a lot of this networking gear
03:20so you don't have to.
03:21Thanks for watching, I'll catch you in the next one.
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