The NICGIGA S50-0800-5G is a new generation of cheap 8-port 5GbE switches that we are seeing on the market. A few weeks ago, we found this online for $179, but we have seen it as much as $199 and as low as $169, depending on the day. Just to be frank, we are doing this review just to show folks what these offer, but we are going to have some thoughts later on. We also started reviewing 5GbE adapters like the BrosTrend 5GbE PCIe Adapter to help provide a more comprehensive look at the 5GbE ecosystem out there. Our hope is that we can start creating a set of resources around 5GbE, like we have around 2.5GbE and 10GbE products. Let us get to it, kicking off the switch series with a brand that combines NIC and Giga.
Here is an Amazon Affiliate link to what we purchased.
NICGIGA S50-0800 Hardware Overview
The switch itself is a fairly standard 1U box.
The eight ports are labled as 100M, 1G, 2.5G, and 5G capable.
This is going to be a small nitpick, but the port numbers are white digits on a yellow background. This offers little contrast and is hard to see. Hopefully in future versions they use a darker background.
On the sides, we get vents.
On the rear, there is not a whole lot going on.
There is an AC input and a grounding point, but not much else.
There is a flat metal top.
The bottom has raised metal feet, but cost optimizations mean we did not get rubber feet to keep a desk safe.
We also get rack ears that allow us to mount the switch into a rack. This may seem like a small point, but we have found some switches that come with rack ears that do not actually make the correct width for racks.
Inside, this is a relatively simple design.
On top, we get the power supply.
On the bottom, we get our main switch PCB.
The long heatsink cools the PHYs.
This heatsink, next to the ESMT chip, is our main switch chip.
As a bit of foreshadowing, both this and the YuanLey version use the same Realtek RTL9303. This is super interesting. The RTL9303 is the same switch chip that we saw in the QNAP QSW-L3208-2C6T, TRENDnet TL2-F7080, and others. The reason this is interesting is that it is actually an 8-port 10GbE switch.
Next, let us plug the switch in and see how it works.
Thank you for this review! I wonder if these switches are using “rejected” RTL9303 chips that can’t quite run fast enough (or cool enough) to support 8 ports at 10gbps.
Alternatively it would be interesting if there was a firmware hack that could re-enable 10g..
Does it fit in a 10” minirack?