So with Crypto mining being less profitable and miners selling their rigs for cheap I thought how can I get my self a cheap managed network switch. I saw mining motherboards with 12 PCIe 2.0 1x slots(4gbit bandwidth) and tought hey if I plug in some cheap 10g 2port network adapters I can make my own network switch with exactly the ports I need(SFP+ rj45). Put opensence on it and boom Managed network switch with multigig(2gbit per port). Is there something I am missing or have I found a way to get cheap multigig? Also can anyone who has a 10g only network switch tell me what kind of power it is using per port so I can compare? Thanks for debunking my idea and saving me a few bucks.
So, sort of along the same vein. I recently wanted to build a cheap 10G router. I found this SuperMicro X10SLH-N6-ST031 on ebay with 6x 10G RJ45 on it (they don’t do auto negotiation, and only run in either 1G or 10G) for roughly $60. This specific seller gave me a compatible CPU for free, already in the mobo. Of note, this motherboard is slightly longer than a micro-ATX motherboard, but still smaller than a full sized ATX board. Knowing this, I went for the safest option of finding a case that was compatible with both micro and full ATX. I ended up going with a Silvertone GD09B HTPC chassis.
After finding that, I wanted to make sure I could update the BIOS to include patches for Spectre and Meltdown. Lucky for me, users at servethehome already did this! The modded BIOS also enabled NVMe support. There’s also a lot of great info about this board and related projects in that thread.
It works perfectly for my use case. I think with the NICs, it runs at about 100W idle. More than a normal switch, but cheaper for the hardware at least compared to other 10G switches. Might be worth considering!
100W idle? Wow, that’s worse than I though.
The price seems great though, but no fall-back to 2.5gbit is also a bit problematic in a homelab setup.
Yeah. My solution is to do the negotiation on my microtik switch. Basically I input 10G to the switch from the router, and then use the switch to change the speed of the connection.
Where I live 100W would cost me something like $25/mo to run, continuously, for the life of the device. I think my 8x10Gb + 24x1g switch draws around 15-20W if I’m not using PoE and I spent around $260 on it. Inside a year the commodity switch becomes cheaper to own even if I were given a whitebox equivalent for free.
If I lived somewhere with lower kWh costs I’d be happy to roll my own whitebox but it’s just not viable here.
I do admit I am graced by low power costs due to hydro, and if that wasn’t the case I probably wouldn’t have done it.