Cheap 10GbE or 10Gbase-T has arrived with the Realtek RTL8127. Oftentimes, users have had to choose between the Marvell AQC107 and AQC113 families for low-cost 10Gbase-T or several used enterprise NICs from Broadcom and Intel. The data center NICs tend to have more capabilities and offloads, but power consumption is higher, and new pricing can easily be five times higher. Now, with the Realtek RTL8127, we have a 10Gbase-T solution that is already producing under $50 new NICs, which only use a PCIe Gen4 x1 lane and sip power at sub 2W for the chip and sub 3-4W for the board. Cheap 10Gbase-T is now attainable.
Also, please note that we purchased a few of these cards, and the one we sacrificed for photos did not work at the end. This is not sponsored, but if you want to find the cards we purchased and current pricing, you can check out the AliExpress affiliate link 1 and link 2. We thought we would get different cards, but that was incorrect, and we received the same cards, only a few serial numbers off.
Realtek RTL8127 NIC Overview
We ordered a few of these NICs, but they all arrived looking essentially the same. As a quick note, these came with both brackets.
While the front of the NIC has the primary components, the back does not have a lot going on. Something small, but fun, is that instead of a model number, we have simply “RTL8127 PCIe 4.0×1 10Gbps Network Adapter.
The heatsink is also interesting. The fins go top to bottom, not front to back. So the airflow is probably better aligned to a workstation versus a server.
Here is another view of the heatsink.
The PCIe Gen4 x1 is really useful. Some motherboards have x1 slots. Using an older PCIe Gen3 10GbE NIC would require a x2 electrical or, realistically, at least an x4 physical slot. An x1 slot is just very flexible.
We pulled off the heatsink and got to the RTL8127 NIC chip.
It looks like most other single-port Realtek NIC chips we have seen.
Next, let us get to the performance.
No legacy test with PCIe 3.0 or even 2.0?
Just double checked. They support full Multi-GbE. 100/1/2.5/5/10. That would make them a good defacto choice for all motherboards going forward allowing for folks to support whatever network they might be running up to 10GbE.
With the outrageous prices of motherboards these days, I would hope that all of the manufacturers include 10GbE as the default going forward.
How about interrupt usage and CPU load with 64byte packets ?
Gen3 and Gen2 x1 do not have the bandwidth for 10G speeds.
I think the idea of many motherboards having this, also given the price of memory and such, it starts to make a lot more sense.
Adrian – on the 64b wait until 2026. We literally just rolled in a giant (well) used Pelican case with big packet generation box that we should have up and running later this week. We still will have some time until we publish results from it, but my hope is to be able to test up to the QNAP 25GbE/ 100GbE with it at 64b line rate https://www.servethehome.com/qnap-qsw-m7308r-4x-8x-25gbe-and-4x-100gbe-managed-switch-review/
All part of the process of getting much better networking reviews.