I've been having difficulties getting my onboard NIC (Realtek 8111DL) to consistently negotiate @ 1000Mb/s. I've replaced the cables with good CAT6 on both ends, tested the wall run, and my upstairs roomate (who owns and controls the switch) verify everything is fine on his end (and he is a Network Admin, so I trust his testing). Now it's time to replace the NIC.

 

Question is: Which Intel model? What am I looking for to verify compatibility with unRaid? PCI or PCIe (i really don't have a choice on this one, as I only have one PCIe slot and will be adding a SAS card before too long)? I see four well-rated cards on Newegg that are all w/in a few dollars of each other. I'm new to shopping specs on network gear, so I can't readily tell the difference.

 

Any suggestions/input is greatly appreciated!

I am going to take a guess and say get the PCI over the PCI-E card if your motherboard has PCI slots.

 

This is because the bandwidth of one PCI slot can easily accommodate 1 gigabit network, whereas a PCI-E x1 slot can accommodate two drives.  (one pci slot can't accomnodate two drives well because they'd be a lot slower than 100MB/s on simultaneous access--e.g. parity checks).

 

I bought the PCI-E Intel NIC and wish I had gotten the PCI version of it.

 

Btw, I bought a $35 PCI-E intel card for only $20 on eBay--it was pulled out of a brand new system that came with it, but didn't need it.  So you might wanna look for deals on used NICs on eBay if you don't fear that market--I like it as of late because of the good buyer protection it offers.

http://www.ebay.nl/itm/Intel-PWLA8391GT-1000Mbps-Desktop-PCI-Network-Card-NIC-/150592466899?pt=US_Internal_Network_Cards&hash=item231002afd3

 

Free and fast shipping. Got mine within a week. Works perfect.