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Comment by logifail | Hacker News Reader

> MikroTik 4-port CRS305-1G-4S+IN

I have two of these at home, they're neat little bits of kit.

They're fanless and therefore silent, which is fine until you realise you want to do 10GbE over existing copper cables with something like Mikrotik's S+RJ10 adapter. Then the temps start to rise...

So, I've decided to go completely to fibre, even if it means opening up the walls of the house. Just bought a job lot of used ConnectX-3 cards off ebay.

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> ConnectX-3 cards off ebay.

Those cards are so good. I got a few after seeing them rated in r/homelab and haven’t looked back. The Synology took one and it was about 1/10th the price the official Synology one was.

> Those cards are so good

Agreed. You can find them on eBay for ~$40 a pop, and they work flawlessly on Linux and Windows. I've made a few purchases from the seller "bitsquad" (ships from Kentucky), and he always seems to have Mellanox/Chelsio in stock.

Another good tip is to use Direct Attach Cables (DAC), which have a much lower power consumption and save you the cost of 2 fiber optics as well. This only works on short distances of course, but between the MikroTik and a few devices that might very well be the case.

How do you obtain custom lengths of fibre cables that work with ConnectX-3?

Use fs.com, their generic cables work with MikroTik no issue and they do custom orders.

The ConnectX-3 cards are not vendor locked in any way. (And even if they were, that'd only affect the SFP, not the cable.)

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