High Sierra native support for 10Gb ethernet

[pastrychef]

pastrychef - Thanks for detailed response. Also thank you for your mATX build details and EFI directory! I've been running very similar hardware to yours for the past week and everything has been going much more smoothly than my last Hackintosh attempt a few years ago.

Anyway, back on topic:

I got the Synology E10G18-T1 in the mail today. I originally intended to have the Asus card in the Hackintosh and the Synology card in my NAS. The Asus card showed up in the system report on the Hackintosh, but it would always say the cable was disconnected, like other have reported pre-flash.

Given that the Synology card also seems to be an AQC107 card, I decided to try it in my Hackintosh. Surprisingly, without any flashing it seems like it might be working and I am able to get Gigabit speeds. Unfortunately I don't have anything to test speeds past that yet since the Asus card also doesn't work in the Synology NAS. :/ When I open System Preferences > Network > Ethernet (en2) > Hardware, I am able to see speed options for higher speeds, however, so that seems like a good sign.

Is there anything else I can check to see if the card is likely to work at its full potential in this configuration? I am considering ordering another Synology card to put in my NAS and using this card in both machines.

Glad my EFI folder is working well for you. The great work by all the devs who bring us things like Clover, FakeSMC, Lilu, etc have really made Z370 work as closely like a Mac as possible.

That's very encouraging to hear about the E10G18-T1. I may have to get one of these instead of the Sonnet since the Sonnet model seems to be plagued with hardware reliability issues. Since it's working at 1GbE, my guess is that it will also work at 10GbE. You can confirm if it's using Aquantia driver in IORegistryExplorer.

 

[cosmos654]

Glad my EFI folder is working well for you. The great work by all the devs who bring us things like Clover, FakeSMC, Lilu, etc have really made Z370 work as closely like a Mac as possible.

That's very encouraging to hear about the E10G18-T1. I may have to get one of these instead of the Sonnet since the Sonnet model seems to be plagued with hardware reliability issues. Since it's working at 1GbE, my guess is that it will also work at 10GbE. You can confirm if it's using Aquantia driver in IORegistryExplorer.
View attachment 369259

Here on a 17,1 hackintosh build, both cards are working with full 10Gbe speeds (file transfer between 300 and 600 Mb/s ).
Asus card-> Hackintosh
Synology card -> Synology 1817+
I noted your I/O screen capture is different maybe because the SMBIOS and/or OS version (10.13.6 here)

 

[pastrychef]

Here on a 17,1 hackintosh build, both cards are working with full 10Gbe speeds (file transfer between 300 and 600 Mb/s ).
Asus card-> Hackintosh
Synology card -> Synology 1817+
I noted your I/O screen capture is different maybe because the SMBIOS and/or OS version (10.13.6 here)

Cool. Does your Synology card work without any KextsToPatch?

 

[cosmos654]

Cool. Does your Synology card work without any KextsToPatch?

Sorry, I misspoke: the two cards work together, one in the hackintosh, the other in the synology.

 

[mirwaiz]

Great going with AQN107 directly purchased from Aquantia. But I have to use Apple drivers in Windows. I wish it was native in macOS without flashing 10.13.3 firmware.

 

[nickewing]

Odd issue that I didn't notice before because when testing I was only using one monitor: If I have the 10Gb card in, I am unable to use two monitors. The FileVault preboot screen loads and I can enter my password, but there is no loading bar after that like there usually is, just black. Waiting for several minutes doesn't seem to help. If I boot with one monitor and try to plug in the second, the initial monitor turns white and the second is black. Unplugging the second monitor after that does not bring back the first and I have to reset the machine.

If I look at the BIOS, it seems like it's reporting the GPU slot as running at x8 and the NIC at x4, which I think is expected for my motherboard (Asus ROG Strix Z370-G Gaming (Wi-Fi AC)) when using both PCIe slots. It doesn't seem like the GPU should require x16 just to boot with two monitors, should it?

I'm also using a M.2 NVMe SSD to boot from. I'm not sure if that factors into PCIe equation here or not.

I tried booting in verbose mode but after the FileVault preboot screen, it's just back on both screens. Any guesses on what might be going on, or how to debug this?

Thanks!

 

[pastrychef]

Odd issue that I didn't notice before because when testing I was only using one monitor: If I have the 10Gb card in, I am unable to use two monitors. The FileVault preboot screen loads and I can enter my password, but there is no loading bar after that like there usually is, just black. Waiting for several minutes doesn't seem to help. If I boot with one monitor and try to plug in the second, the initial monitor turns white and the second is black. Unplugging the second monitor after that does not bring back the first and I have to reset the machine.

If I look at the BIOS, it seems like it's reporting the GPU slot as running at x8 and the NIC at x4, which I think is expected for my motherboard (Asus ROG Strix Z370-G Gaming (Wi-Fi AC)) when using both PCIe slots. It doesn't seem like the GPU should require x16 just to boot with two monitors, should it?

I'm also using a M.2 NVMe SSD to boot from. I'm not sure if that factors into PCIe equation here or not.

I tried booting in verbose mode but after the FileVault preboot screen, it's just back on both screens. Any guesses on what might be going on, or how to debug this?

Thanks!

I've booted with two monitors and my Gigabyte GC-AQC107 installed. But never tried with FileVault. I currently don't have a second monitor to test.

 

[nickewing]

I was able to get the dual working at the same time as the 10gbe card by disabling CSM in the BIOS. I saw pastrychef's microATX build notes about Asus CSM affecting multiple monitors and the 10gbe card, but interestingly my experience seems to be the opposite of what was mentioned there.

I finally got a second 10gbe card after Amazon lost my first order. I'm now using a Synology E10G18-T1 in both my Hackintosh and NAS. AmorphousDiskMark reports ~990MB/s reads and 220MB/s writes while Blackmagic Disk Speed Test shows 490MB/s reads and 417MB/s writes. The lower write speeds on the first test are likely just my slower NAS drives. In any case, it seems like it's working!

 

[mm2margaret]

<moved>

 

[vlad1966]

OK, hope someone here can help - any Networking gurus? Only getting 130MB/sec data transfer speeds on my new 10GB Network!!!

I bought the Akitio card mentioned on page 33 & have it in my Hack - works great with the drivers (at least I think so).
Bought the Edimax XGS-5008 10GB switch that mm2margaret has - also seems cool. I have an Intel X540-T2 running in the x16 PCIe slot of my Open Media Vault server. The Hack & OMV Server are connected to the switch via 7' cat7 cables. The Edimax switch is connected to my Motorola Cable Modem/router via a cat6e cable for internet access.

Don't see a lot of performance tuning options on the admin page of the switch, not even option for Jumbo Frames. According to Edimax site it does support 9k frames but I guess there's no option to adjust that.

So, I've tried transferring large movie files to from my Hack/OMV Server & all I can get is 130MB/sec steady. It starts out at 1GB/sec but then drops quickly down to 130MB/sec. Not sure what else I can try. Switch has the latest firmware. I've tried SMB & FTP but there's no difference. I also have my Hack & OMV Server set to 9k Jumbo Frames. The switch is on the same subnet as my cable modem/router. Also, the switch diagnostics page shows that both connections from my Hack & OMV Server are at 10GB.

Please help!