HW Check for 10G Fiber upgrade

TrueNAS General
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I started my transition to fiber, 10Gb/s, and SFP+ in this thread

Looking to move my main PC (running Windows 10) to 10G fiber as well.

I found a seller online on Mercari selling what looks like dismantled genuine equipment.

In particular, it looks like I can snatch the following at low prices:

NIC looks like a genuine OEM Intel X520-DA1 (https://www.mercari.com/us/item/m16085804052/)
Transcievers look legit too:

The switch on the other end is a generic one I got from Amazon and I have some generic LC-LC cable (Eaton N320-05M-RD, product manual says it’s OM1 but that still supports 10G under 33m and my cable is only 5m).

Am I setting myself up for incompatibilities here?

Thanks,

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If your transceivers are Intel as well, I think it’s very unlikely that they would be incompatible with intel NIC. For instance, my cheap chinese fake-intel x520-da2 works with every transceiver I have tried (finisar 10G, noname 10G AOC, noname 10G DAC, noname 25G DAC). I had some issues with one of the ports, though (not related to transceiver).

Also, if you need only 5m cable, getting DAC/AOC would probably be cheaper.

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I’ve also remembered that it worked with a 1G sfp/rj45 noname transceiver and didn’t work with a 2.5G sfp/rj45 noname transceiver (perhaps because intel x520 doesn’t support 2.5G).

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Thanks!

I have a pair of 10GTek transceivers and a 10GTek NIC on my actual NAS, so I figured this would be similar.

Speaking of 5m… I just ran the cable to check it out and it is 18in too short. Either I’m going 6m or 10m. I’ll look at DAC prices too. Do I need to go Intel brand for that too?

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I saw DACs up to 7m. And AOCs can be very, very long (just like a regular optical cable with suitable transceivers).

Just in case, you can’t shouldn’t bend optical cables much. DACs are better in this regard. However, I’ve heard that they can have other issues (haven’t encountered them myself).

AIUI, an optical cable + transceivers setup is preferred when you want to run the cables through the walls of your site/home. Thus, when the time for upgrade (to sfp28 or sfp56) comes, you could just change transceivers without changing the cable (and drilling new holes in the walls). Otherwise, AOCs/DACs are totally fine and usually cheaper.
DISCLAIMER! I’m not a networking guy and can be wrong. Don’t take my words blindly.

Well, I can’t be 100% sure. I’ve just shared my experience that x520 looks omnivorous transceivers-wise.
Perhaps you could try to find local marketplaces’ offers with a free return policy and try them out.

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I’ve seen topics stating that “vanilla” intel x520-da2 can be very picky about transceivers. It seems that vendor-specific models (Dell, Lenovo etc.) are more tolerant of various transceivers. FWIW, it is also stated that the x520 EEPROM can be patched to unlock non-intel transceivers.

Mine is Huawei (at least it says so with sudo lspci -k | grep SFP). So, my statement was incorrect, and you should choose transceivers carefully if your x520-da2 is “intel branded”. @SalineSolutions, NB!

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Thanks! I found a dissassembler selling an Intel X520-DA2 with 2 Intel Transceivers. Installed it yesterday, been working great after I installed the April 2025 (final) W10 drivers

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