Network Card Upgrade
The MSI MAG Z690 Tomahawk Wifi that I used in our original build has a 2.5G Intel I225V network card which for Blue Iris is more than enough bandwidth. The built-in NIC hasn’t given me any issues though the I225V NICs have been known to have issues. But I have been using this build for a little more than just Blue Iris and when testing motherboards and other network equipment here in the office I have been needing a more reliable PC to use as a server when doing network testing. With this build being in the rack I decided an upgrade to a full 10G connection would come in handy. But I wasn’t looking to spend a lot of money doing it. I decided to go with an Intel X520-DA1 based network card and picked up the cheapest one available at the time on eBay which was just $28.83 shipped and including taxes. This one came from China and was Inspur branded.
I would need to get it connected to our network and keeping the costs down did mean it has an SFP+ port, not a copper 10G ethernet connection. You could get SFP+ adapters and run the cable but you can avoid having to worry about any compatibility issues there and keep the costs down even more with a DAC Cable aka a direct attach cable that has the SFP+ connection on both ends, as long as your server in nearby this is going to be the better option. I went with the RamboCables SFP+ DAC Twinax Cable on Amazon because I have used them in the past and know they work well with my hardware. I did however get just a 1 meter cable but looking back I should have gone with a slightly longer cable to give slack to be able to pull the server out. As it sits I have to disconnect it before pulling the server out to work on it, I may swap that out in the future.
Now there is one thing to keep in mind with this upgrade, however. Intel’s support for their old X520-DA1 NICs is a little dodgy now when it comes to Windows 11 support. But just using the Windows update on it and scrolling through the list did bring up a driver, you just can’t use the all-in-one driver that Intel uses for everything else anymore. This does mean that you will need a secondary network connection until you get things working.
