We have been running a series on 5GbE this month, and one of the cards we purchased for it is a Nicgiga (that is Nic + Giga for those wondering) 5GbE adapter. This is another Realtek RTL8126-based card, so it supports 2.5GbE and 1GbE speeds as well. We purchased ours for $36, so it was slightly more expensive than the BrosTrend 5GbE card that we previously reviewed. Still, we wanted to show folks options.
If you want to purchase one of these, here is an Amazon Affiliate link to what we purchased.
Nicgiga 5GbE Realtek RTL8126 NIC Hardware Overview
The card is a small PCIe Gen3 x1 card, designed to be as compact as possible for an x1 device.
Here is the single network port.
Something small might be the airflow design of this heatsink. Sometimes, we see these with more server front-to-back airflow designs. This is more of an up-and-down airflow design.
Unlike some others, the heatsink does not have a thick thermal pad between it and the RTL8126 NIC chip.
Here is the back of the card where there is not much going on.
Here is the low-profile bracket that this comes with.
Here is the Realtek RTL8126 NIC chip that we find on almost all of these 5GbE adapters.
Next, let us plug it in and see how it works.
Nicgiga 5GbE Realtek RTL8126 NIC Performance
The Realtek RTL8126 is continually getting better support. At the same time, it is a 2023 era NIC that we really started in cards in 2024. For a consumer CPU, that might seem old. For a NIC, 2.5 years old (at the time of this review) is relatively new. As a result, you may need to install drivers.
We ran our simple iperf3 testing on this:
Overall, this is spot on with the other RTL8126 NICs that we have tested with this setup.
Final Words
This is certainly not the fanciest NIC. At the same time, it is a Realtek RTL8126 5GbE NIC that is fairly inexpensive. The BrosTrend 5GbE card came in nicer packaging, had better branding, and cost $1-2 less, so that is usually our go-to. Still, pricing changes over time. Also, these tend to be about $13-16 more than a 2.5GbE NIC, so if you have a PCIe Gen3 x1 slot and were thinking about adding a 2.5GbE NIC, this costs a few dollars more and offers the potential to run at the higher speeds.
Overall, this NIC was cheap, and it worked. At the same time, aside from price, there is no real differentiator for this NIC. That is why we are buying more of the BrosTrend units right now, but if this was less expensive, we might choose this one instead.
Where to Buy
If you want to purchase one of these, here is an Amazon Affiliate link to what we purchased.
