I’m looking at quad port 2.5Gbe Intel PCIe cards. These cards seem to be mostly x4 physically (usually PCIe gen 3) whilst I have a PCIe Gen4 X1 slot, which is more the theoretical bandwidth that the card can support. The card needs at the most PCIE Gen 3 X2 == PCIE Gen 4 X1 in terms of bandwidth.

How do I fit the card into a PCIe x1 slot? Won’t it lose performance if all the pins are not connected to the physical PCIe connector? Is there a PCIe x1 riser that the community likes that is somewhat affordable?

Thanks

  • Cort@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    I think you’re missing the point of a riser. I’d the motherboard only has a 3.0x1 port, plugging in an x16 riser means it’ll still only be x1 electrically, but it can physically fit larger cards. If the back of the slot is open already there not much point of using a riser since you can physically fit larger cards already.

    • If your board has pcie 3.0x1, you want the pcie 3.0 card. Running at 2.0x1 reduces speed by 50%
      • Cort@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        You can probably use it, but you will not get full throughput on all the ports at the same time. 3.5/6 max real world.

        My advice, get a cheap pcie4 10g nic and a 10g switch with multiple ports, but idk what you’re trying to do.

        • marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          1·
          4 days ago

          I’m trying to create a router + switch combo. I know bonding over CPU is considered a bad idea but I don’t want to run a proprietary OS on my switch to get VLANs. I’d rather run an OpenBSD VM and do everything in it.

          This might delve into some networking, but if you can bear with me:

          Whilst I like the idea of VLANs, I don’t like running proprietary firmware on my devices. Which means a regular L2+/L3 switch is not going to cut it. But I’m starting to wonder if I can just use Veths and subnetting to segregate traffic between different machines on my network?

          Using your example, can I do:

          PC (router) -> 10Gbe port (3 Veths) -> switch -> three different machines on different subnets?

          Can I prevent the three machines from talking to each other directly through the switch if I put them in different subnets? Sorry for my lousy networking knowledge, it’s been a while.

          • Cort@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            4 days ago

            Yeah a cheap switch probably wouldn’t cut it. You’d need a more expensive managed switch to do segregated vlans, which would balloon the budget.

            Not sure on veth segregation, but you could probably try with equipment you already have (onboard nic w/ veths > unmanaged gbit switch)

            I’ve been looking at the open banana pi router since it has openwrt (debian/Ubuntu too). I think I’m going to wait and hope they put more multi-gig ports on next one tho.