10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet Converged Network Adapter (NIC) with Intel 82576 Chip, Ethernet PCI Express Network Card, Dual RJ45 Copper Ports, PCI Express 2.0 X1, Compare to Intel E1G42ET
$ 3.20
When building a Linux system the last thing you want to deal with is weird drivers. So I always look for Intel or Broadcom chipsets in ethernet cards. Intel chipsets in particular are pretty much guaranteed to work. Most of the servers I build have Intel I350 ethernet cards for a reason. They’re fast, reliable, and use the rock-solid “igb” driver that you can be absolutely certain will be included in the stock kernel from any Linux distributionThe I350 controller chip has been in production since 2011 and Intel plans to manufacture it through 2031. It’s fast, reliable, inexpensive, and uses only 2.8W of power. Those features, combined with the high availability of the chip has made it ubiquitous on server motherboards. As a result it’s extremely well supported by any operating system you might want to use.Thie PCI interface on the card identifies itself as being built by Beijing Sinead Technology Co. The ethernet MAC address has the correct prefix (98:b7:85) for Shenzhen 10Gtek Transceivers, which matches the name of the seller on Amazon. That’s always a good sign; they’re using properly assigned MAC addresses rather than just cloning some other card.The card appears to be identical to the I350 cards sold by Intel. The only difference is the price, which is less than half what Intel charges.I’ll probably buy more of these in the future. Great pricing and like the other 10Gtek products I’ve purchased in the past it’s a solid product.
