A USB to 10GbE Adapter - YES PLEASE!!! (Review)

IOCREST USB4 to 10Gbe Ethernet Network Adapter (AliExpress Buy Links)
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Video Chapters
00:00 - I Hate Seagulls
00:13 - The Start
00:28 - USB4 to 10G, Big Deal?
01:19 - Price and Availability?
02:20 - THE BAD NEWS!!! USB 3.2 Compatibility
02:50 - Design and Build
03:10 - Compared with Thunderbolt3 Adapters
03:45 - QNAP 25GbE ? SFP+ ?
05:04 - Taking the adapter apart
06:35 - Benchmarks and Sustained Performance
08:35 - NAS with USB4 Ports?
09:49 - Verdict and Conclusion

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[kevbo]

Glad to see 10GbE getting more affordable. Do I need 10GbE? No. Do I want it?

[waynetaylor]

Note that the AQC113c has a design bug. Marvell issued a May 2022 notice that the 113c may fail to link up with PCIe during power on, reboot, or sleep/wake in many PCs. Marvel has consequently discontinued this part.

[levifig]

Most folks need this type of adapter for their laptops, not their NAS’es!! If you need 10Gbps connectivity on your storage, you should be buying one with 10Gbps or PCIe expansion.

But this kind of adapter is a godsend for more affordable 10Gbps connectivity on CLIENT devices with limited or no PCIe expansion, like laptops and miniPCs!

[Yiveytube]

Yes, just got mine unit of those the other day! Super happy with it! Payed $97 incl shipping. Works great with TB3 on my iMac.
I like that it’s really a TB3/USB4 to M.2 inside so I’m going to order a M.2 to PCIe riser to try some other PCIe cards.

I was sort of shocked when I found it, because it was so cheap, but found some other written reviews and took the plunge. Very happy!

[miksu]

I'm really excited about the new RTL8126 5Gbps adapters you can buy for around 20€. The RTL8157 should also bring 5Gbps with a USB 3.2 connection really soon. For the price difference 5Gbps may make more sense than 10Gbps for a lot of applications.

[fanshaw]

We really should be encouraging PCIE, not USB where performance is important. It encourages oversubscription and people end up wondering why their stuff doesn't work well. Demand more PCIE lanes.

[PatrickDKing]

Everything 10Gbe needs to come down in price.

[slimstates]

I actually love the seagulls with the content! :D

[Trigr]

You should try pulling the m.2 card out of the enclosure and sticking it into an m.2 header directly on your board...

[MrMoonsilver]

Another advantage is that TB doesn't work on all mainboards. Namely the ones that obviously don't have TB

[bitcoinsig]

Just note that these often don't have offloading/rdma support, so your speed gets throttled by the max ghz speed of a single core. If I were to guess, it's very likely if you had opened the task manager and viewed the cpu utilization, your top speed was a result of a pegged single core somewhere on wither the laptop or the nas. It;s just something to note when adding these types of devices to budget devices, like a raspberry pi, over using a pci card which may have rdma.

[Ultrajamz]

*turns into skeleton waiting on new synology hardware

[interfacetc]

I have bought this one, it is amazing 10GbE Adapter. The price has increased a little bit, but still is reasonable. I think a lot of similar solution is coming, the price will be drop more~

[rustyshackleford]

Haha I think the seagulls are part of the channel now

[robertyboberty]

Got one of these it's doing an admirable job. Was dirt cheap on Ali Express. It likes ventilation so plan for that

[chrisweeksnz]

Is there an option for self-powered, rather than bus powered? Or even a power injector? That way it could also be used with thunderbolt 2, with a converter.

[tommybronze]

I'm using for last 2 years an USB-C, thunderbolt 3 .... which falls under the usb-c speed requirements to 10GBe. It's great for laptop, but NOT for server ... those are not stable enough. And my one is actually the QNAP and works as a standard usb-c without need for thunderbolt protocol (yes tested it under linux on AMD machine and it purrs like a kitten). So that's not that new thing. Yes it was expensive, but it really helped me achieve a very stable 10gig connection for my laptop.

[TimothyLipinski]

Great Video ! My new Dell laptop only has USB 3.2 Gen 1 and USB 2.0 and HDMI to watch your video on the BIG Screen ! tjl T. Lipinski

[WonderSausage]

This is not a USB adapter. USB4 requires Thunderbolt 3 as a sub-feature, and this is using TB3. This is Iocrest's long-standing M.2 10GbE adapter on top of a Thunderbolt 3 bridge board in an external enclosure. I imagine they are calling it "USB4" because that sounds trendy, but it's just a Thunderbolt 3 adapter. The only thing notable about it is that it's available a bit cheaper than other TB3 10GbE adapters on the market (e.g. $100 vs. $123).

The bridge board literally has an Intel Thunderbolt logo on it, which should have been a clue. Look at your own photo. If you rotate the photo 180 degrees and zoom in on the BGA chip, you can tell it's an Intel JHL6240 Thunderbolt 3 controller from 2019. You could have googled this in seconds.

In short, this is just another AQC113 over TB3, nothing to see here, move along.

This device is not using a SATA bridge, there is no such thing as a PCIe device behind a SATA bridge. The only thing you can connect to SATA, is a SATA device (obviously). If this adapter performs at less than 10GbE wire speed that's because of the Thunderbolt encapsulation overhead, which shouldn't be high enough to bring it down to 6Gbps. You're probably using a SATA SSD on one end or the other.

[espressomatic]

If you come across a device with SFP+ at a similar price point, please make another video. I have this one on order, but the copper connection means another $30 or so to connect it to my SFP+ switch.