The ASUS X99-E-10G WS Brings 10 Gigabit Ethernet To X99

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In an industry full of ostentatious claims, every product stack needs a reserved, understated statesman. Not the type that stays quiet in board meetings out of fear, nor the type that needs to raise their voice to make a point. Nope, we’re talking about the type that sits back and observes the young upstarts as they clamber over each other to get into the limelight and then makes one careful, reassuring statement in a deep, soothing voice that stops everyone in their tracks. In the ASUS motherboard family, that role is gracefully played by the new X99-E-10G WS.
 
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I dunno. Kinda NOT a big fan of that M.2 slot where you're supposed to hang the drive off the front of the board...
 
Nice.

Now if I could only find an affordable 10G switch :p

Asus WS line is a favorite of mine. It's what I'm currently using. No racing stripes or ground effects, but everything it needs to get it DONE.

If I were shopping today, this would be my prime motherboard contender, along with an i7-6850K

(I have no need for more than 6C/12T on my workstation, but I want at least the 40 PCIe lanes that the 6800K doesn't have)

I'll be shopping again probably after the Zen launch, just in case Zen has any impact on the market. The 3930k is still plenty fast, but it really heats up a room at 4.8Ghz, and the motherboard lacks some modern features, and plastic bits are starting to snap off from age, so it's time...

Question is how much a board like this will cost. I'd like to think it would be cheaper than that $600 LED ridden monstrosity they showed off recently, but Intel X550 networking chipsets on their own are not cheap, so they have to add some cost to the board.
 
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I own both the X99-E 3.1 WS and the Z170-WS. The ASUS workstation motherboards are the most expensive and least supported of the ASUS motherboards. There are 3 times as many BIOS updates and twice as many driver updates for the ROG than for the WS. ASUS doesn't even bother making a separate forum for the Work Stations, you have to go to the DELUXE version for the respective workstation motherboards to get any information.
 
I own both the X99-E 3.1 WS and the Z170-WS. The ASUS workstation motherboards are the most expensive and least supported of the ASUS motherboards. There are 3 times as many BIOS updates and twice as many driver updates for the ROG than for the WS. ASUS doesn't even bother making a separate forum for the Work Stations, you have to go to the DELUXE version for the respective workstation motherboards to get any information.

Lol. I've been using ASUS boards for years. They've been my go-to brand since the demise of Abit. I currently ahve their P9x79 WS in my main rig.

I didn't even realize they had a forum.
 
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Lol. I've been using ASUS boards for years. Theylve been by go-to brand since the demise of Abit. I currently ahve their P9x79 WS in my main rig.

I didn't even realize they had a forum.

Yeah who uses OEM forums anyway. You get better results harassing them on twitter.
 
Now we just need 10G switches and NAS devices to drop about 50-75% in price.
 


Wow indeed. I remember thinking the P9X79 WS was a bit steep at $399.99 when I bought it in November 2011, but this is a new high...

Then again, a dual port 10gig Intel x550 NIC alone costs $380, so maybe this shouldn't be surprising.

That's $380 for the Ethernet ports, and $270 for the rest of the board. Not a bad price if you actually use 10gig Ethernet and would have bought it anyway...
 
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Nice.. what kind of copper is needed for 10G though? Cat6?

So [H], where's the review :)

Edit, found the info:
55 m (Class E cat 6)
100 m (Class Ea cat 6a or 7)

So need Cat 6, 6a, or 7. Can go 150Ft with Cat 6, so easy peasy.
 
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Nice.. what kind of copper is needed for 10G though? Cat6?

So [H], where's the review :)

Cat7 I believe. Not sure if Cat6 will work on short runs, like with was with Gigabit, where Cat5e was OK for short runs, even though Cat6 was the official cable.

edit:

Wikipedia has the answer.

Cat 6 is good for up to 55m (180ft)

Cat 6a or Cat7 is good for up to 100m (328ft)
 
Cat7 I believe. Not sure if Cat6 will work on short runs, like with was with Gigabit, where Cat5e was OK for short runs, even though Cat6 was the official cable.

Cat6a will work fine, I use that for all my copper 10g. I am going to get the new version of the x708 this week as right now it's all just hard connected together :)
 

Yeah, I know.

But 8 ports aren't enough!!!!! :p

ports.jpg


I'd be happy with a switch with 24+ gigabit ports, and 2 10gig "uplink" ports.

Id run one of the 10 gig ports on the switch to my server, one to my workstation, and I'd also have a dedicated 10gig run between my server and my workstation.

I used to have a dedicated fiber 10gig run to my server, but the damn brocade adapters were the most unreliable pieces of shit I've ever come across in my life. I liked it though. If I could just find an affordable switch ($300 range?) with said 24 gigabit ports and two copper 10gig ports, I'd do this in a heartbeat.
 
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Note to Intel: Take note and lets get 10G built into the Skylake-X and Ice Lake chipsets please!
 
Yeah, I know.

But 8 ports aren't enough!!!!! :p

View attachment 7286

I'd be happy with a switch with 24+ gigabit ports, and 2 10gig "uplink" ports.

Id run one of the 10 gig ports on the switch to my server, one to my workstation, and I'd also have a dedicated 10gig run between my server and my workstation.

I used to have a dedicated fiber 10gig run to my server, but the damn brocade adapters were the most unreliable pieces of shit I've ever come across in my life. I liked it though. If I could just find an affordable switch ($300 range?) with said 24 gigabit ports and two copper 10gig ports, I'd do this in a heartbeat.


Essentially, THIS is what I want, but instead of 4 CX4 optical transducer slots, I want 4 10G-BaseT slots.

Actually, this one would work, if it were only about a third of the price. (as much as I'd hate to go back to Netgear again...) I don't need the layer 3 functionality though. Managed layer 2 is more than enough for my application.
 
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Better off just getting the 10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC separately. At least you can have options on which one to choose.
 
Better off just getting the 10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC separately. At least you can have options on which one to choose.

I am going to buy this v2 switch this week, 8 ports is not a lot but I can hook my two supermicro broadwell-e servers to it, my san and my workstation :p at least I will get the speed haha.
 
Hmmmm wonder if we can do 10GB crossover with just the NICs.... I used to do this with gig like 15 years ago when gig was pricey and everything was FE. I ran multihome in 2 boxes and used gig for file transfers, other network and internet was on the FE loop.

edit - some quick googling says you don't even need crossover cables anymore. Since gig everything is automatic mdix
 
Better off just getting the 10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC separately. At least you can have options on which one to choose.


This tends to be my preference as well, but there are arguments in both directions on this.

If you buy a separate 10G NIC you:
  • Wind up using 8X pcie lanes possibly forcing a GPU (if you have two, or other expansion cards) into 8x mode instead of 16x mode
  • It's inefficient, as now you have both the traditional gigabit port(s) on board, and the 10gig slots, some of which will likely go unused.
  • Might spend more money. A dual port x550 adapter costs ~$380 right now. Now MSRP of this motherboard is $650, but who knows what the actual sell price will be. If it does wind up selling for $650, $650-$380 is $270. You can certainly get older or lower end 2011-3 motherboards cheaper than this, but for a new high end model, $270 seems cheap.
 
I am going to buy this v2 switch this week, 8 ports is not a lot but I can hook my two supermicro broadwell-e servers to it, my san and my workstation :p at least I will get the speed haha.

Does it support LACP? If so, I'd use it as a tie in to my main switch. Use 4 ports in LACP at gigabit speeds to tie it in to 4 ports on my 24 port gigabit switch, and use the remaining 4 ports for my 10gig devices.

I'd rather do it all in one switch though.

I don't understand why many-port gigabit switches, with a handful of 10gig "uplink" ports are so rare. These were the norm when we were going from 100mbit to gigabit speeds. Almost every switch out there had many 100mbit ports and a handful of gigabit "uplink" ports.
 
Does it support LACP? If so, I'd use it as a tie in to my main switch. Use 4 ports in LACP at gigabit speeds to tie it in to 4 ports on my 24 port gigabit switch, and use the remaining 4 ports for my 10gig devices.

I'd rather do it all in one switch though.

I don't understand why many-port gigabit switches, with a handful of 10gig "uplink" ports are so rare. These were the norm when we were going from 100mbit to gigabit speeds. Almost every switch out there had many 100mbit ports and a handful of gigabit "uplink" ports.

The documentation says it supports up to 4 port lag LACP so that should be sufficient for sure.
 
I am going to buy this v2 switch this week, 8 ports is not a lot but I can hook my two supermicro broadwell-e servers to it, my san and my workstation :p at least I will get the speed haha.

I took the 10 GB ethernet plunge, it's faster, and I've never been able to fully saturate the bandwidth. The limitation is now my PC and NAS drive speeds.
 
This tends to be my preference as well, but there are arguments in both directions on this.

If you buy a separate 10G NIC you:
  • Wind up using 8X pcie lanes possibly forcing a GPU (if you have two, or other expansion cards) into 8x mode instead of 16x mode
  • It's inefficient, as now you have both the traditional gigabit port(s) on board, and the 10gig slots, some of which will likely go unused.
  • Might spend more money. A dual port x550 adapter costs ~$380 right now. Now MSRP of this motherboard is $650, but who knows what the actual sell price will be. If it does wind up selling for $650, $650-$380 is $270. You can certainly get older or lower end 2011-3 motherboards cheaper than this, but for a new high end model, $270 seems cheap.

I prefer to disable the onboard (usually Realtek) ports on my motherboard and use a more powerful offboard NIC's anyway. Nowadays the PC's network connection is one of the most important things it can have.

As for spending money, unfortunately with current prices (unlikely to go down anytime soon) the only way to go 10 gigabit ethernet is to just accept the cost and spend it. I had to buy 2 Intel x540 NIC's and a Netgear XS716T switch (extremely expensive!) to take the 10 gigabit ethernet plunge. I've never looked back!
 
Hmmmm wonder if we can do 10GB crossover with just the NICs.... I used to do this with gig like 15 years ago when gig was pricey and everything was FE. I ran multihome in 2 boxes and used gig for file transfers, other network and internet was on the FE loop.

edit - some quick googling says you don't even need crossover cables anymore. Since gig everything is automatic mdix

You can direct connect two 10 gigabit NIC's directly such as a PC and NAS, then hookup the same NAS with a conventional gigabit NIC to a switch for the rest of the network. A better alternative might be to get an enterprise network switch with a few (usually 2) 10 gigabit ethernet ports with the rest of the ports being conventional gigabit ethernet ports. But 10 gigabit ethernet comes in multiple connectors, so be sure to get the right type.
 
Hmmmm wonder if we can do 10GB crossover with just the NICs.... I used to do this with gig like 15 years ago when gig was pricey and everything was FE. I ran multihome in 2 boxes and used gig for file transfers, other network and internet was on the FE loop.

edit - some quick googling says you don't even need crossover cables anymore. Since gig everything is automatic mdix

I was going to point out the crossover thing, but then I saw your edit.

Yeah, crossover cables haven't been needed for a really long time.
 
I remember reading that Zyxel had come out with some affordable 10gig switches, but then I did some googling, and found out that in this case "affordable" is a relative term.

I've been very disappointed at the speed of which 10gig networking has moved towards mainstream. 10->100 and 100->1000 went much faster and cheaper than this, from what I recall.

I guess it is to be expected though, as consumers have pretty much shunned wired Ethernet in favor of the vastly inferior WiFi solutions. The truth is most people just don't care about networking speeds as long as its fast enough to not bottleneck their internet connection, which means 10Gig will never see mass consumer adoption like gigabit Ethernet has, and thus it will always stay in the Enterprise with occasional trickle down to pro-sumer market, and be way too expensive :(

Another case where the lowest common denominator ruins everything for those of us who care.
 
I prefer to disable the onboard (usually Realtek) ports on my motherboard and use a more powerful offboard NIC's anyway. Nowadays the PC's network connection is one of the most important things it can have.

As for spending money, unfortunately with current prices (unlikely to go down anytime soon) the only way to go 10 gigabit ethernet is to just accept the cost and spend it. I had to buy 2 Intel x540 NIC's and a Netgear XS716T switch (extremely expensive!) to take the 10 gigabit ethernet plunge. I've never looked back!

How loud is that switch? I heard the 8 port v2 is a lot quieter so I have been focusing on that one but I would love more ports.
 
How loud is that switch? I heard the 8 port v2 is a lot quieter so I have been focusing on that one but I would love more ports.

Very quiet for an enterprise switch, similar to a stock CPU cooler at load. I think units starting from the XS716T upwards have variable speed fans which spin at the needed rate to keep it cool.

When it's first powered on the fans will spin at full speed for 2 minutes then spin down to the appropriate speed needed. Fans at full speed is insanely loud.
 
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Very quiet for an enterprise switch, similar to a stock CPU cooler at load. I think units starting from the XS716T upwards have variable speed fans which spin at the needed rate to keep it cool.

When it's first powered on the fans will spin at full speed for 2 minutes then spin down to the appropriate speed needed. Fans at full speed is insanely loud.

I pulled the trigger on the v2 switch and now it is mounted behind my desk and I cannot hear it at all. During startup it's loud but within 30 seconds or so it calms down to near silent. Very happy with it. Would have liked more ports but I was concerned that the other switches of the same class that have not been upgraded to a v2 will be too loud for me as this thing is mounted behind my desk. This is a fairly basic affair though, it has LAG/LACP and VLAN's with some QOS but not super configurable, for example you cannot specify a custom MTU, has to be 1500 , 4k or 9k and I would have liked to specify 9144 for my intel cards. For the money though I am very pleased with it.
 
Board. For such a high priced board, ipmi is a must.

I really feel this way as well but finding a workstation board anywhere with ECC and Xeon Support with that many x16 slots and IPMI as well as USB 3.1 and some other current features does not seem possible. I look at Supermicro often to find one. No dice, even if I remove 10GB there are scant boards I would even use.
 
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