Question RJ45 transceiver for Mellanox ConnectX-3 CX341A?

[lopri]

As the title says. I have a 10 gbe PCIe card I picked up on eBay some time ago, and it comes with an SFP+ ports, and I would like to play with it to see if I can make it talk to my NAS. Will any brand work?

 

[lopri]

And will these ever go down in price?

 

[Fallen Kell]

Not sure about that exact model number. Not all ConnectX 3 cards support ethernet as some are infiniband only (I know the VPI models support both). I have several of the ConnectX-3 VPI dual port QSFP+ cards. They were very friendly with most all cables and transceivers. I suspect you would not have any issue using a Wiitek SFP-10g-t as long as the card you have supports ethernet protocol and is not an infiniband only card.

Also in terms of price, no, I don't think you will see 10Gb SFP+ cards go down a lot more in price. What you will and do see are the 40Gb cards at cheap costs (one of mine only cost $29, the other two I got for $39 each) because most people don't have the equipment to connect them and the breakout cables (1xQSFP+ -> 4xSFP+ cables) do cost a bit, and the converter that will go direct from 1xQSFP+ -> 1xSFP+ are also pretty pricy (something like ~$80), so when all is said and done, it is cheaper for those people to buy a card that simply has SFP+ ports or 10Base-T ports than to get even the highly discounted card with QSFP+ ports. That is as long as they don't own network switches which have QSFP+ ports as well like I do and run at 40Gb.