It is finally time to start reviewing 5GbE products. To kick us off, we have the BrosTrend 5GbE adapter. This is enabled by the newer Realtek RTL8126 chip, and provides a relatively inexpensive way to step up from 1GbE networking. Pricing varies, but we purchased ours for under $35, which makes it quite reasonable. Since this adapter also supports 2.5GbE, it is a decent way to get 2.5GbE now and easily have an upgrade path to 5GbE down the line. We have not yet seen many switch reviews with 5GbE, so please stay tuned for those as we have several already tested and that will follow this adapter review.
If you want to purchase one, here is an Amazon affiliate link to what we purchased.
BrosTrend 5GbE PCIe Adapter Hardware Overview
Here is the card. Although it comes with a full-height bracket, you can see just how small it is.
One of the big features is the PCIe Gen3 x1 slot. When we did our recent Realtek RTL8127 NIC Review, we noted that we needed a Gen4 x1 slot to run 10Gbps. Let us face it, there are many systems that do not have a Gen4 x1 slot open, but perhaps have a Gen3 x1 slot. This is for those situations.
Small but notable touches are that the heatsink and the PCIe bracket are both branded. This might sound small, but many of the bargain basement priced NICs we have seen do not have this.
Here is a quick look at the heatsink. It is actually not solid. Just to give you some sense, these cards use something like 1.5-2.5W, so they do not require a lot of cooling. Put another way, we have seen cards with the RTL8126 without any heatsinks.
Here is another look at the heatsink. You can see how thin it actually is in the center.
We also get a low-profile bracket.
Here is the back of the card.
Some of the NICs we have received do not come with branded boxes. This actually came with one that is branded and specific to this 5GbE NIC.
Taking off the heatsink, we can see how simple this card is. We can also see how thick the thermal pad is.
Here is a closer look at the PCB.
Here is the Realtek RTL8126 chip.
Next, let us get to the performance
BrosTrend 5GbE PCIe Adapter Performance
After installing this card, depending on your OS generation, you may have to install drivers, but the overall support is getting much better as these were released in 2023 and we started seeing cards in 2024.
We used our standard iperf3 test just to validate 5Gbps performance.
We certainly saw the performance that we would expect. What is also a little bit neat is that, despite having very high-end network testing gear, these lower-end NICs are actually challenging to test, so we might still use iperf3 for this class of device.
Final Words
I think the hardest part for this NIC is that it is 5GbE. These days, 2.5GbE NICs are $20 or so. This is roughly $34, and then 10GbE NICs are $49. Perhaps the key point is that if you only have a PCIe Gen3 x1 slot, this is about the fastest NIC you can install. As a low profile x1 card, it is also very easy to fit into almost any system.
This BrosTrend 5GbE NIC looks good, works as expected, and is priced well. To us, this is one that we will probably buy a few more of to upgrade older systems.
Where to Buy
If you want to purchase one, here is an Amazon affiliate link to what we purchased.
