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Comment by q3k | Hacker News Reader

Oh my god can you please just use normal SFP+ already.

SFP+ is not a good choice for a consumer device.

From a physical pov it’s not rated for anywhere near as many mating cycles and requires user care to protect against environmental damage.

From a connectivity pov you’re limited to short runs for DAC or extra cost to add a transceiver on each side.

Consumers don't need to detach/attach the actual modules. They can just plug in their ethernet cables like normal, except they'd also have the option to switch to something better in the long run.

It's more expensive but hardly an impossible fit. My router comes with an SFP+ port on the fiber side, it's just not labeled as such.

Combining SFP+ with fiber in consumer spaces is going to be more of a challenge (although I'll gladly accept it if it somehow makes it to market somehow).

> They can just plug in their ethernet cables like normal, except they'd also have the option to switch to something better in the long run.

I don't think many will exercise that option, and it adds complexity and costs that most people won't need. It would be useful for some, so it would make sense to make some boards with sfp+ rather than an integrated transceiver, but not as the default.

If you want 10G sfp+, Intel x520 cards are cheap on ebay.

The cards might be cheap but they tend to be very hot and wasteful in terms of power. Only the newer more expensive modules finally support PCIe ASPM properly. Lack of it might actually also increase overall system power consumption due to certain sleep states becoming inaccessible.

They also show a SFP+ variant

https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/05/22/realtek-rtl8127-rtl8...

What would be the benefit of using SFP+ on mainstream consumer motherboards? It would further increase the effective price to consumers as they'd have to purchase a separate transceiver, which are bulkier and might overly crowd an already compact I/O shield layout.

Hopefully a cheap transceiver chip will change this, too, but all-copper 10GbE switches are stupid expensive.

On an ATX motherboard, SFP cages would impede into the space normally taken up by VRMs, their heatsinks, and the CPU socket. For a built in NIC, on consumer boards, an RJ45 port takes up way less space, no more than the USB ports and WiFi card does at the back of the board.

Few people these days use any wired networking. And an even smaller percentage of those people would migrate to fiber. 10gbe is still easily done over copper.

I tried last year but was a bit scared on how many switchs/NICs/cables are vendor-specific.

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