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Forum Discussion
powellandy1
Oct 03, 2019Virtuoso
Upgrading ReadyNAS 516 to 10GBe Ethernet
Hi Having upgraded previously to the Xenon processor of the 716 I thought I would have a dabble at adding 10GBe ethernet via a card. So - given there isn't a riser I had to purchase one of these - ...
bpaulson
Feb 12, 2025Tutor
Super old thread I know, but in case anyone wanted to upgrade to a 10gbps nic in their Readynas 516 it can be done just as the OP stated. I purchased an X540-T2 card off of eBay for $17.99. Then I purchased a riser cable off of Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PFJ9FZN?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1
A pci-e 8x male to 8x female riser card.
I then took the unit apart and carefully kind of wedged the cable and the card in there (it's snug and held in with a screw at least.)
Booted the unit back up and hooked it up to my 10gbps switch and boom. I had also previously upgraded the CPU and ram (16GB's of ECC ram and an Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1265L V2 @ 2.50GHz)
I'm sure there's other differences between the 516 and the 716 but what the rest are I have no idea. I'm not sure if I'm going to sell the unit or what I'm going to do with it as I don't have any use for that much storage (6 x 8TB drives.) I purchased the unit used back in 2017 to back up client's macbooks when I did phone/computer repair. I got out of that and really don't have any need to store data at the moment unless I decide to start a youtube channel or something lol.
Sandshark
Feb 13, 2025Sensei
Any genuine Intel or Supermicro NIC in that family (X520-X540, 1 or 2 port) will work, at least with OS6. Other brands with that family of chips may, but I've not tried them. Other chip sets will not work. I do not know about with OS 4.2.x, but expect they should since some rack-mount units had them.
I think it would have been a little easier with about another 5cm of cable, as I also used a 20cm one like you did. Since my switch has SFP+ ports, I used an X520, which has no fan. There are X540 (RJ-45) versions without a fan.
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