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January 30th, 2023 08:00
XPS 8940, what 10gb PCIe card will work?
I'm building a 10gb home network for my NAS and multiple PC's around the house. I have an XPS 8940 with a 1gb ethernet port. I see the specs says there are expansion slots for add-ons. What 10gb PCIe card should I use and which PCIe slot do I use? I'm out traveling at the moment so I'm not sure which type of slot I have in my PC. I can't seem to find any images of the mobo with details to identify which slot is for which add on. Can the 8940 have a 10gb rj45 card added on and which slot do I use?
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sam55todd
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243 Posts
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January 31st, 2023 01:00
Concur with @Vic384 on slots, but PCIe with x16 lanes can't be used for LAN adapters since it's designed by Intel (CPU-bound PCIe lanes) for Storage or GPU devices only (as per H470 Chipset architecture).
So the only options you have left is x1 and x4 PCIe Gen3 slots.
Most Intel adapters I've seen for copper-based 10Gbps LAN speeds are for x8 PCIe slots (but also for older generation, fiber-based ones have x8 PCIe connector too) therefore aren't suitable, but Intel X550 controller-based adapters are still a bit too expensive (having x4 PCIe standard).
There are plenty of non-Intel 10G Lan devices for Gen3 PCIe x4 (Aquantia controller, some rare from Marvell/AQtion).
Haven't seen any 10Gbps products for PCIe from Realtek (same with 5Gbps), only for 2.5 Gbps speeds.
5Gbps products haven't even gained sufficient traction for mass releases.
Vic384
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January 30th, 2023 16:00
@Truckdriver33 According to the Setup and Specifications, the XPS 8940 has three PCIe 3.0 slots, 1 PCIe x16, 1 PCIe x1, and 1 PCIe x4. If you have a graphics card then the PCIe x16 is used. I don't have a recommendation for a specific card but the 10Gb cards I looked at require an x4 slot.