Thunderbolt and 10GbE NICs
2023-04-06Background
I’m migrating from my general Windows 10 desktop to an M1 MacBook Air, as my primary media editing “workstation”. The MBA will be a fixture on my desk and will use caffeinate (link) to prevent it from sleeping. This would also allow me to use the MBA as an arm64 server if I needed to host services such as AirMessage (because I work with Windows environments).
This driving, and underlying, goal is really to be better about turning off my desktop PC at night to practice better power consumption hygiene. Making some improvements to the homelab along the way.
To that end, I need to add 10GbE capabilities to the MBA in order to maintain almost usable speeds while working with Adobe Lightroom and DaVinci Resolve.
The Dongles
There are a few Thunderbolt adapters dedicated to providing a 10GbE interface (either coppoer or fibre), that I found in the < $500 range:
Sonnet Solo10G - Currently found for $299, and is in-stock in a few retailers. Unfortunately, the RJ45 variant reportedly has possible issues with overheating the exterior heatsink and being hot to the touch. There was one account of someone adding an 80mm USB computer fan onto their adapter for additional cooling, but that was for the SFP+ variant which runs slightly cooler than the RJ45.
OWC Thunderbolt 3 10G Ethernet Adapter - Retails for $199 and is also in-stock. From a review online, the internal chipset here is an Aquantia AQC107S and came into OWC’s portfolio from their AKiTiO acquisition. A redditor previously compared the chipset to the Intel X540, to which the Aquantia was comparable. As this chip is found in the above Sonnet, users also report that this adapter runs hot.
Promise SANLink3 N1 - Retails at $249 and is generally unavailable through retailers. CDW has it listed as 4-6+ weeks, for next availability.
QNAP QNA-T310G1T - Retails at $199, but is out of stock.
CalDigit Connect 10G - Out of stock. According to TweakTown, the internal controller is also the Aquantia 107S.
DIY
One consideration is to DIY this with a separate TB3-PCIe enclosure and a spare X540-T2 PCI card that I have available. Based on this writeup, Intel X5xx don’t have official support. Only the i210/i225 (from Intel’s line) are officially supported.
What’s Next
As the options revolve around the same internal controller from Aquantia (now Marvell), I will be going with the OWC adapter. While it consumes one of two ports on the MBA, the remaining will have a standard hub for additional accessories.
This will be paired with an unmanaged 10G switch to facilitate file transfers between the MBA and the TrueNAS.