1G NIC with 1xRJ45 Port

I put this card in my five-year-old Dell Windows 11 desktop in order to take advantage of fiber internet speeds. You'll need to pair it with an SFP+ R45 transceiver to use it with Ethernet. I used a transceiver from 10Gtek and it's working great. You'll also need the latest X520 driver pack from the Intel website; I used v29.4. The auto-install didn't find the NIC so I used Device Manager's Update Driver function and pointed it to the folder where I'd unzipped the driver, and it installed fine.

Works perfectly in Windows 11 and doesn't seem picky with sfp+ modules. You do have to install the driver manually but for the price I can live with that.

I would give this card 6 Stars if I could. Literally plugged it in and it took right off. Windows 11 recognized the card as a Intel I210 Gigabit Fiber Network Connection. I used an MTXNEO 1.25G 1310NM 20KM DDM SFP module. Interesting these cards do not have a heat sync on the main chip like most Intel cards. However, the Intel I210 card does not have a heat sync either. So absolutely no worries. At the time of this review these cards were selling for $10.99. Let me tell you, this is a steal! I will for sure be purchasing more of these cards. Will let this one run for a while. If it fails within a short period of time I will update my review. For sure not expecting any issues.

I needed a second nic for my NVR. A added this NIC and Windows found and set it up without me needing to do anything. I don’t know if you can PXE boot from it, but it works great from Windows 11. So much better than those NE 2000 compatible cards which always require drivers and are never quite compatible.

Needed for my failing computer. After installation the computer came back to life with internet.

The way the driver has be installed is a bit sketchy, why Windows cannot recognize the card without blanket installing the full Intel complete driver pack is odd. This card does not seem to be name brand, which is probably why getting the driver installed is not as trivial. But that's not a big deal, just need to do it once. But what is a big deal is that this card is extremely unreliable, even with the latest Intel drivers. When sleeping the workstation with this card in it, there's at least a 50% chance the card will no longer be able to talk to the switch anymore. I've tried disabling the card in device manager and reenabling it, I've tried disabling the port on the switch and reenabling it, I've tried disabling auto-negotiation and forcing a static IP, I tried a different switch port and fiber cable; the only way to get the card to work again is a full shutdown (which is not 100% reliable) or unplugging the fiber cable for a few seconds and plugging it back in. It's a firmware issue. The driver has no power saving settings that might affect this, there is no way to persistently fix this issue that I am aware of. And to make it even worse, the issue does not only happen when waking from sleep. Sometimes a normal boot will result in the fiber link also remaining in a down state where unplugging and replugging has to happen or the switch just says there is no sync. It's extremely annoying. I have a Mellanox ConnectX 4 in another workstation that has had zero issues at all when plugged into the same bank of switch ports, when sleeping, when restarting or cold booting, and using the same Ubiquiti SFP+ transceiver model and Ubiquiti fiber cable that I am absolutely certain is not damaged or contaminated. Just skip this and go with a used Mellanox, you'll thank yourself when you have to do no troubleshooting and pay less to get a more reliable device made by a reputable brand that has a proven history.

I am a computer tech and I was testing out a linux iso and It was fine except it didn't like realtek network cards ( built into the motherboard) So I did a little reaserch and this seemed to comeup inserveral reviews. I got it and it worked like a champ.

Great addition to get 10 G network at home. Blazing fast. Windows 11 found it immediately and installed the drivers.