The YuanLey AQC113-X1 10Gbase-T is a relatively inexpensive PCIe NIC. Since we have been reviewing so many more switches for our Ultimate Cheap 10GbE Switch Buyers Guide, we thought we would look at a few NICs as well. This one was cheap, so we bought it. As the name suggests, this is a Marvell Aquantia AQC113 NIC.
If you are looking for one of these cards, here is an Amazon affiliate link to where we purchased ours.
YuanLey AQC113-X1 10Gbase-T PCIe Network Card Overview
The card is relatively small and is designed to fit almost anywhere.
It has a single port and comes with both full-height and low-profile brackets.
Since this is a Marvell AQC113-based card, we can get in a PCIe Gen4 x1 slot. We have seen older designs that were x4 so that they could use Gen3, but the disadvantage is if you have a Gen4 x1 slot, a x4 card often will not fit.
The heatsink is relatively huge. This card is something like 3.5-5W of power consumption, so this is more than ample for that low power consumption.
Here is the back of the card.
Honestly, this is a very simple device, and perhaps that is the point at under $55.
Performance
Plugging the card in, to be clear, the Marvell AQC113 has been out for some time. As a result, drivers are usually built-in these days. If not, then you might have to download drivers.
Still, once it is installed, you will have a Marvell AQtion 10Gbit network adapter.
We are using our simple iperf3 setup to test these:
Overall, we got 9-10Gbps from this card, which is about what we would expect in this test setup.
Final Words
This is really going to do battle with the Realtek RTL8127 cards for bringing 10Gbase-T ports to more systems. YuanLey has a small Marvell AQC113 card. We did not grab a photo of this, but we received a low-profile bracket with ours that you can see in the listings. For under $55, this is a decent NIC.
This NIC was an emergency purchase when we needed a 10Gbase-T NIC quickly. There is still a gap in both capability, but also cost and power consumption of this versus data center 10Gbase-T NICs. Another thought that is worthwhile these days is that if it is only $20 or so to upgrade from a 5GbE adapter to this or $35 from a 2.5GbE NIC to this, then that offers more flexibility for the future.
Where to Buy
Here is an Amazon affiliate link to where we purchased ours.
