I was hoping for 10gbe by default, and 5gbe is nice, but I have a small network of 10gbe devices including 2 desktops and my NAS. My plan with my current PC was to add one of the many M.2 10gbe adapters, but those usually require a back panel PCIe bracket slot for the actual ethernet connection. They plug into an M.2 slot on the MB, but then have a cable linking them to a small circuit board attached to a back panel bracket.
Now that I have a Framework Desktop on order I’m shifting those plans to what I can accomplish with this new system.
I don’t need wifi, so I’m willing to sacrifice the M.2 slot used for the wifi card (I don’t see it explicitly mentioned anywhere that that slot is M.2, but the wifi device they sell for it is an M.2 adapter).
Obviously the first obstacle is that there are no back panel slots to hold the bracket, but I was wondering if the square ventilation holes are large enough to dremel out and put the socket poking through one of them. The adapters tend to come with both low and high profile brackets so their back panel half could be unmounted from those and attached to the back panel if there is a place for them to poke their socket through.
Space is also a concern since many of the adapter cards have a heat sink on the M.2 half and some of them have larger or smaller circuit boards on the back panel bracket that might not fit inside the case next to where the ventilation holes are.
The reach of the cable between the two halves could also be a problem, but the Framework case is so small I doubt there would be a reach issue.
According to the mainboard docs published in another topic, the M.2 slot for the wifi module is Key E, so I’ll need to research of the 10gbe adapters are compatible with that.
D’oh! The 10gbe adpaters all seem to use Key M for the bandwidth. Key E only has PCIe2 x2 with a max bandwidth of 500MB/s - so nowhere near enough to support 10gbe.
This type of mod would require giving up the second M.2 drive to use the second M.2 Key M slot…
My impression is that a PCIe version would have hard parts that must poke into the back wall of the case in a way that would require basically ripping the back panel in half and doing major surgery. They are precisely measured so that part of that single card must insert into slot A and the other part of the single card must slide into a pre-arranged larger hole in the back of the case. That’s not a simple install when there is no back panel slot.
The attraction of an M.2 version is that it comes in 2 parts and the part that needs back panel access is very small and can be tucked in a corner with extremely flexible positioning into just an “ethernet port” sized hole. The 2-part “connected by a cable” design combined with the square ventilation holes already present on the back panel might make it much easier to install.
If, perhaps the single PCIe slot was located on the mainboard far enough away from the back panel, though, then a short PCIe NIC card could maybe be installed without its panel bracket and then you could try to extend the port itself to one of those same back panel ventilation holes. My impression, though, is that the slot has been positioned “as if” it would have had its back panel bracket on the actual back panel of the Framework case. Is that not true?
Another issue with using a PCIe card for this is that the PCIe slot itself was not designed for retention. Cards need the back panel bracket to keep them from wiggling out of the slot. Graphics cards even have an extra retention mechanism on top of the bracket for stability.
A NIC card, given that you are poking cables into it, would also need that hard connection to the back panel which doesn’t exist in the Framework case without more extensive mods beyond just cutting an access hole.
Also they complicate the back panel surgery by the fact that they dictate exactly where the holes must be cut by where the port is located compared to the slot. As long as that part of the back panel is just flat plastic or metal, that isn’t a big deal, you just have to slice a hole through something more solid than the ventilation mesh.
Yes, I’ve been using a USB adapter for my current PC, but it hangs out the back and uses a USB port. I’ve been waiting to upgrade my old 3 slot GPU to a newer 2 slot so I have an extra slot on my SFF case to use the M.2 adapter, but I stopped pursuing that when I decided to get the Framework.
The 10gbe USB adapters are more of a brick (not sure why when a tiny M.2 adapter can do it, but likely because USB is harder to convert to ethernet signals than the PCIe lanes of an M.2 slot?)
The expansion port ethernet adapter for the laptops has a large protrusion because the bodies are too small for an ethernet port and that would be hanging out the front of my desktop. I’d rather live with 5gbe to keep the ethernet cable hidden off the back.
In at least one review they showed a look into the rear of the case over the internal PCIe slot and it looks like the lowest pair of vent slots might line up with the card - but it would depend heavily on
Whether the vent holes line up with the card right
Whether the card fits into the case with the bracket removed (probably)
Whether the card’s ports on the back are close enough to make it easy to plug into them through the vent hole
Whether the vent hole is big enough to plug a cable through it
Whether the port can be secured to the back of the case so you don’t dislodge the card when plugging in.
You could always use the parts from the framework desktop in another case, though finding a case that both uses FlexATX power supply like Framework as well as a 92mm cooler clearance might be tough, and you might need an extension cable for the power supply. If you add your own power supply however the options open up more.
I’m personally considering the PCIe x4 slot on this to be a feature for when this motherboard becomes repurposed for server use. I might use it as a combo VM host and file server, and add a HBA in to run 8 sata drives. 5gbe is plenty fast when I’m currently used to running 1gbe on my network, and my servers would only be on 10gbe links, so that would be 5gbe for my framework desktop, and 5gb for all the other computers in the house to share.
This is my thinking as well. My home Internet is 5gbps symmetrical, so I wouldn’t often use more than that from my desktop. My homelab is all 10gbe, though, so even I eventually retire this board I’ll add 10gbe at that point.
I wonder what nics they use, the new realtek ones? Aquantia? Some ancient intel one?
There was a caviat somewhere that the pcie bit is limited to 64Gbit because of pcie (which is still a bit optimistic) but display out can use the full 80. Don’t really see how they’d get pcie5.
Didn’t see it mentioned elsewhere, but if you want to stick with the M.2 slots, there are two M-key slots (one on top, one on bottom), and you could use the bottom one for a 10 Gbps NIC, maybe. It’d be nice if the cable could be routed to a plug on the front in one of the ‘tiles’, or if there was a removable tile on the back that could be used for a custom port…
If the Framework Desktop case had a singular disadvantage, I’d say that it’s this: there is no official way to expose ports from internal add-on cards (i.e., from the PCIe slot or from the M.2 slots). (A second disadvantage might be that the PCIe slot needs just a few more millimeters to accommodate for different types of cards.) The most obvious way to expose ports would be to drill out a hole on the back or side. However, if we’re talking about non-destructive ways, the only thing that comes to mind is routing cables through the front panel, specifically through the bottom-right tile of the front panel.
It would be cool if the community came up with custom tiles that could support the routing of cables through this tile slot. For example, a custom tile could hold an externally-exposed port that connects to an internal port.
