Even the cheap 10Gbase-T NICs are getting better. We purchased the Gigaplus Marvell AQC113 Adapter for only $67.50 after a promotional code on Amazon. We have seen a few other adapters with a similar chipset, but this one is just a bit more interesting. It is time for a review.
Cheap Gigaplus 10Gbase-T Adapter with Marvell AQC113
Looking at the adapter, this is a low-profile card with a PCIe x4 connection and a branded heatsink.
Looking at the 10Gbase-T port and the full height bracket the driver link is printed on the bracket, which will be important later. There is a QR code. We did not use the QR code becuase you just never know.
On the back of the card, we see that it passed quality control.
Pulling the heatsink off, we can see the Marvell Aquantia AQC113 chip. This is a newer version printed with the Marvell logo.
Just for some sense of how much is going on here, let us quickly compare this to the NICGIGA 10Gbase-T Adapter and you can easily see the difference. The Gigaplus card has a lot more going on. Something also to keep in mind is that the Aquantia NICs are designed to be installed on motherboards with relatively low impact.
The Gigaplus also came with a low profile bracket.
Something worth mentioning is that the card did not work out-of-the-box with our test Dell system. Instead, we needed to install the Aquantia drivers that we downloaded from Marvell’s website.
That was the key to getting everything working.
Cheap Gigaplus 10Gbase-T Adapter with Marvell AQC113 Performance
Overall, we got 10Gbase-T speeds as we would expect using iperf3:
This is a fairly well-known consumer NIC and performance was fairly good.
Final Words
On one hand, many will be frustrated by needing to install drivers for a card like this. We can see the standard Marvell drivers in the Windows Device Manager after doing this. Other OSes may have drivers, but the Aquantia NICs prioritized Windows desktops. That will also be frustrating.
At $67.50 this is far from the cheapest PCIe 10Gbase-T adapter. A big benefit, however, is being able to add 10GbE networking to most systems with a PCIe slot. That includes many smaller systems with low-profile slots. If you just need faster networking, and have an extra slot, this worked reasonably well for us over the past few weeks.
Where to Buy
We purchased our unit from Amazon. Here is an affiliate link.
Note we participate in a number of affiliate programs, so we may earn a small commission if you buy one through this link. That helps us purchase more cards to review.
Does this card link at PCIe gen4 in a x1 slot? I’ve tried several AQC113 and so far only an OWC AQC113 will run at gen4, providing a full 10Gb/s in an x1 slot.
Dustin, the Nicgiga does run at gen4 x1 we discussed it over on level1techs forums and I have it running right now in my desktop
I would like to see a sfp+ card that does gen4 x1 but maybe that’s asking for too much