Quad 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI-E Network Expansion Card RJ45 LAN Adapter Low Profile Bracket SY-PEX24086

I was concerned that the small fan on the card would be loud. I cannot even hear it in my OPNsense firewall situated in my Livingroom.

worked GREAT with hardware passthru in a proxmox Ve system , i have been able to vurtualize my 2.5gbit routing

I bought this network card to use in an OPNSense firewall/router machine i was building, I wanted to use one port on the NIC for 2.5gbe WAN and the rest for 2.5gbe LAN. I've been using this for a few days in my firewall and have had 0 problems since install, its been extremely stable. Before installing OPNSense on my machine, I tested the card out on windows and Ubuntu and it seemed to be working fine as well. I'm very satisfied with my purchase, i was reluctant at the lack of reviews but I've had a good experience so far, if anything changes I will update this review.

Proxmox did not immediately recognize it and attempts to alter the networking file did not work. I reinstalled proxmox and it then recognized it and allowed me to change settings from the gui as opposed to the underlying network config file. However after installation if any vm caused network saturation on the card proxmox would go into a kernel panic. Updating drivers and installing intel headers did not resolve. I had intended to pass through the card for an opnsense vpn but instead I was forced to allocate two ports for regular vm resources so that it would not go into kernel panic. Saturation still caused timeouts on a port but with the second port it did not go into kernel panic.

I initially purchased this quad 2.5G NIC with high hopes, but my experience has been nothing short of frustrating. After about a year, one of the ports stopped working completely. While the RMA process was relatively quick, the replacement unit they sent me was worse than the original! The replacement NIC causes my Proxmox server to crash whenever I connect an RJ45 cable. On the rare occasion it doesn’t crash, it only delivers 10Mbps—far from the promised performance. After further testing on multiple machines, it became apparent that the Pericom PCIe switch used in this NIC is likely to blame. Sending out faulty RMA units is unacceptable, and this has completely eroded my trust in the brand. Avoid this product if you value reliability and proper quality control. 👎

I got this for a Netgate rack-mount 7100. It works great and I didn't have any issues. Note: I got the SY one as the other 4 port 2.5g Ethernet port doesn't play nice with FreeBSD. My singular complaint is the fan. The three rackmount fans in the router/switch that have a reputation for being loud combined are still quieter than this fan. It also has a really annoying whine/vibration. If I were to go back and do it again, I'd just get a 4 port 10gb card as many are fanless.