GIGABYTE’s GC-AQC107 10G Ethernet PCIe Card Launched and Listed
by Anton Shilov on November 9, 2017 4:00 PM EST
GIGABYTE has added the GC-AQC107 10 GbE PCIe card it demonstrated early this year at CES to the list of products on its website. The product is also listed on both Amazon US and Amazon UK but is currently unavailable. When the network card is released, GIGABYTE will be the third company to offer a 10 GbE NIC based on an Aquantia chip.
The GIGABYTE GC-AQC107, powered by the Aquantia AQtion AQC107 controller, supports 100M, 1G, 2.5G, 5G and 10G networking standards over CAT5e or CAT6/6a cables and RJ45 connectors (depending on the distance). The card resembles Aquantia’s reference design, so it is not considerably different from 10 GbE boards from Aquantia itself. To ensure that the AQC107 chip does not overheat, GIGABYTE equipped the GC-AQC107 with an aluminum heatsink. Furthermore, to make it easier for consumers to set up their networks, the RJ45 connector features LEDs monitoring data transmission. As for requirements, the GC-AQC107 can be installed into any modern PC that has a spare PCIe x4 slot and is running Microsoft Windows 7 and higher, as well as various Linux operating systems.
| GIGABYTE 10GBase-T Card for Consumers | |
| GC-AQC107 | |
| Controller | Aquantia AQC-107 |
| 100BASE-T | Yes |
| 1000BASE-T | Yes |
| 2.5GBASE-T | Yes |
| 5GBASE-T | Yes |
| 10GBASE-T | Yes (over Cat6 cables) |
| Ports | 1 |
| Price | unknown |
| Release Date | Q4 2017 |
| Additional Information | Link |
The listing on the official website, as well as on Amazon, indicates that the GC-AQC107 will be available shortly. An important question surrounding the card is how much will it cost. Aquantia’s MSRP for its own AQN-107 card is $127, but ASUS charges $99 for its 10 GbE NIC based on the AQC107, so expect the GIGABYTE GC-AQC107 to cost between $99 and around $130.
Meanwhile, a quick check of leading U.S. retailers revealed that 10 GbE-supporting switches are still quite expensive and the most affordable one is the ASUS XG-U2008 10GBase-T that is available for $220 from Amazon and Newegg.
Related Reading
- GIGABYTE Exhibits an Aquantia AQC107 based 10G Ethernet PCIe Card
- ASUS Launches XG-C100C 10 GBase-T Adapter: Aquantia AQC107, $99
- Lower Cost 10GBase-T Switches Coming: 4, 5 and 8-port Aquantia Solutions at ~$30/Port
- Aquantia Launches New 2.5G/5G Multi-Gigabit Network Controllers for PCs
- Aquantia Launch AQtion 5G/2.5G/1G Multi-Gigabit Ethernet Cards (NICs) for PCIe
- GIGABYTE Exhibits an Aquantia AQC107 based 10G Ethernet PCIe Card
- AKiTiO Displays Thunderbolt 3 to 10GBase-T Adapter
Source: GIGABYTE
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CaedenV - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
8k wont take much. 4K h265 streaming is under 10-15mbps, and h265 scales really well with resolution, so moving to 8k should only be 20-30mbps if it is compressed right, and probably less. Shouldn't be a big deal to stream on a standard network... the real issue is uncompressing it and getting it to a display lolmode_13h - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Streaming is a bad example. The main use case is all about large file transfer and fileservers.pixelstuff - Monday, November 20, 2017 - link
I was thinking the same thing. Most Bluray media is compressed down to 30 Mbps or less. You can easily fit 6 of those streams in a 1000 Mbps connection.The main benefit is when you want to copy those files or videos from a camcorder. Trying to copy 4-8GB files around the network takes a couple minutes each over a 1 Gbps connection. A 10Gbps connection makes the copy time almost a non issue.
Yingste - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
This card has been available for months now. I've had mine since mid September and I ordered it on Amazon for $100. I'm not sure why several news companies are saying this is just launching now.mode_13h - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Please post power dissipation for 2.5 G, 5 G, and 10 G!abufrejoval - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
Sorry, but hard numbers are too much work!What I can tell you, however, is that at 10Gbit they will survive in an ordinary PC with convection cooling under room temperature. Got two running for a month or three now.
I tested 10GBase-T cards from Intel and Broadcom some years ago in my home lab which is mostly desktop hardware for acoustics and cheap and some of them died (actually most just powerd down) because their passive heat-sinks were designed to be actively cooled by server fans.
Same with the Asus 208 switch that has two 10Gbit ports: It's all metal outside and it will get warm, but convection cooling will do it. 8 ports without fans still seem out of range.
AFAIK 10Gbase-T started at 10Watts/port just for PHY but judging from just how hot the heat-sink on the Aquantia feels, I'd guestimate around 3 Watts under load.
Hope this is better than nothing.
mode_13h - Friday, November 24, 2017 - link
Thanks for that.I was hoping the author might ask the manufacturer for some hard data (I know it varies - just looking for ballpark), but your experience is quite valuable.
CaedenV - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Anyone happen to know if/how this works with esxi or FreeBSD? My home server needs this :Dabufrejoval - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
ESXi isn't likely to happen, FreeBSD isn't there either.I use it on Windows and Linux and even if the Linux drivers need to be compiled from source, they seem to register in DPKG so that kernel updates won't require manual intervention.
Using it on VZ7 (CentOS with OpenVZ containers), Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 2016.
You can run FreeBSD and even ESXi *inside* a VM if that helps you in any way yet profit from 10Gbit line speeds. As a matter of fact I ran pfSense like that for a while (Ubuntu host, VirtualBox with paravirtualized drivers from BSD), because BSD wouldn't support a USB Ethernet adapter I wanted to use for the backup Internet connection and the Bay Trail hardware only had to physical Ethernet ports available.
The virtualization overhead was much less than what I remember from early VMware days: Virtual Ethernet has come a long way.
Phyllis Hershberger - Tuesday, October 23, 2018 - link
Common faults and troubleshooting methods for switches