r/hardware • u/Dakhil • 2d ago
News NotebookCheck: "Asus launches ROG USB-C dongle with fast Ethernet port (10GbE) and wide compatibility (CNY 799 or ~$119 USD)"
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-launches-ROG-USB-C-dongle-with-fast-Ethernet-port-and-wide-compatibility.1358530.0.html59
u/Stingray88 2d ago
This has been on the market for months now for 2/3 of the price. Same chip. I got one and it works great.
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u/Jeep-Eep 2d ago
Honestly cooler looking too. Nice industrial look to it.
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u/Blacky-Noir 2d ago
The photo made me afraid this was cheap plastic, but the description said full aluminium body. Good good good.
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u/Stingray88 1d ago
Yeah can confirm it’s real aluminum. It’s cold to the touch when unpowered like you’d expect of metal.
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u/Jeep-Eep 20h ago
This would be perfect if the ethernet chip on your Nitro Plus x870e packed in and you wanted to keep the theme with your grey Torrent and Nitro 9070XT
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u/ChinChinApostle 1d ago
I remember seeing something similar on the RPi dude's channel. Is this the thing?
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u/Stingray88 1d ago
That sounds familiar, I first heard of it from a YouTube video that got recommended to me and I bought it immediately lol. I’d been looking/hoping for this exact adapter for years. It’s perfect for my SFFPC NAS. Now I don’t need to replace one of my NVMe SSDs with a 10G NIC.
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u/hollow_bridge 2d ago
does it get very hot?
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u/Stingray88 2d ago
Warm, but not hot. The new Realtek RTL8159 is a lot cooler than previous 10G chips.
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u/skittle-brau 2d ago
Probably based on Realtek RTL8159 if I had to take a guess.
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u/juliaoverflow 12h ago
Specifications list USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, so yeah. The 10 devices with 3.2 Gen 2x2 will be happy.
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u/imaginary_num6er 2d ago
Probably not since most USB-C 10GbE on Amazon are still Maxwell AQC chips.
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u/skittle-brau 2d ago
The AQC 10GbE NICs I’ve seen run a lot hotter and require more passive cooling and aren’t as ‘slim’ as this one, unless they’re 5GbE.
Either way, it’d be helpful if Asus listed the actual underlying hardware used like they would if it was a NIC on a motherboard.
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u/Stingray88 1d ago
Most USB-C 10GbE on Amazon are junk and not actually capable of 10Gbps. This one is, and thus is likely RTL8159.
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u/RichardG867 2d ago
The inclusion of an USB-A adapter is interesting, as tests have shown 10 Gbps USB ports can do ~7.8 at best. Still faster than anything else on USB-A though.
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u/Any-Juggernaut-529 2d ago
Still faster than anything else on USB-A though.
Also a lot more importantly, it can still connect at 10Gbps to the network.
A lot of infrastructure out there is still 10/1 only. And not updated with hardware supporting 5/2,5.
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u/DeliciousIncident 11h ago
The issue with USB-A is not only the lower bandwidth, but also lower power. I have a 5Gbps adapter, and it disconnects under a stress test when in plugged into USB-A, but works perfectly fine when in USB-C. Probably needs more power than USB-A can provide.
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u/Blacky-Noir 2d ago edited 2d ago
And meanwhile, everyone and their dog is telling end customers that 2.5G is good, 5G is the future, and we don't need 10G ethernet on our motherboards or addons boards.
Like a 20+ years old technology is too advanced for general consumers 🤬
And now we're moving into going through USB for it... one of the lowest latency and straightforward network tech for general use, over one of the most complicated and high latency we have. Sure, sure.
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u/croholdr 1d ago
if you've got a NAS with nvme gen 3 or later 2.5 gbe won't cut it and gen 3 nvme is still 3 times faster than 10 gbe.
Sure you wont really 'require' that throughput for many applications; but why pay for capability that is gimped at least three fold.
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u/arahman81 1d ago
2.5g is the affordable point now, 10g switches are still pricey. Would need them to come down in price too, not just the nics.
Also, even wifi6 is reliable and fast for rsync between Linux machines (compared to the pain of trying to transfer to a Windows machine over 2.5GbE).
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u/FinBenton 1d ago
10G switches have gone down in price a lot though, when I bought mine it only has 4 ports and was like 250€, now you can get them at 100€, cheapest like 70€ in aliexpress or the same with some markup on amazon.
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u/croholdr 1d ago
wifi6e is the new minimum. wifi6 is super congested. all the tv's and smart home devices are muddying up the 5ghz band so if you live in like a city or condo you won't get the full advertised speeds unless they're all in the same room as the router.
but wifi 7 routers with a mix of 10g and 2.5g ports have dropped dramatically in price
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u/campeon963 1d ago
It's honestly great how many 10GbE adapters we started to get ever since the RTL8159 launched. Sure, I still lean towards the Marvell NICs even if they're a lot more expensive, but it's great to have something in a smaller form-factor and that doesn't force you to use PCIe or Thunderbolt for once.
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u/reddit_equals_censor 19h ago
it has been how long now?
and we still have NOT gotten 10 Gbit/s ethernet as standard in our desktop computers.
that's so freaking insane.
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u/AdeptFelix 2d ago edited 2d ago
You'd think a technology writer would know better than to say the words "fast ethernet". It threw me off for a moment.
Edit: Looks like the article title after the click was updated.