Mining motherboard+ 10g network cards= cheap network switch? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by plotting_homelab@lemmy.world to c/homelab@lemmy.ml

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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.

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[-] seaQueue@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Surprised I've never seen this DIY approach mentioned anywhere or thought of it before 🤔 - usually people end up going for those mini PCs that have multiple network cards soldered to the mobo itself

Rolling a whitebox router is so much :effort: when decommissioned enterprise gear is dumped on fleaBay so cheaply. Plus it's almost impossible to rival the power efficiency of a commercial switch without blowing more money than you'd pay for one.

I've kicked the idea around as a way to hook up multigig devices to my network (managed 2.5Gb + 10Gb switches are still expensive) but by the time you've built the machine you're looking at the same cost and you have to maintain it, plus your network is down for however long it takes to reboot the thing after kernel package updates.

this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023

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