I am looking into purchasing a HL8 eventually, to replace another server I have.
I have a Windows PC with a 2.5 Gigabit adapter and an External HDD containing a lot of data for the new server. (Running USB3)
I was wondering if anyone has really pushed the 2.5 Gigabit NIC in the HL8 with data transfers?
I will have a 2.5 gigabit switch between both systems.
Still wondering on this.
Hey @urbanracer34
The HL8 has room for one PCIe expansion slot, so if you’d like to add a 25G NIC to the system, you can install it there.
As for achieving 25G/s throughput, this will depend on several factors:
Once we know more about these details, we can better assess if the system can deliver that level of performance.
Hello! I only have the infrastructure for 2.5G, the NIC it comes with it, NOT 25G!
I don’t have an HL8, but I think the 2.5G NIC on the Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX 1.0 is a
Realtek RTL8125BG. You can try googling that and see if you can find people reporting performance tests or bugs if no-one responds here specifically re their HL8 experience. I think Realtek had a reputation with their 1G stuff of latency and inefficient drivers, but I think they have gotten past that. Your performance may also depend on what OS you run, the drivers for that OS, and your workload (are you concerned with sustained throughput, or gaming and latency). The other thing that comes up for some people with NICs is support in virtualization software like VMWare, but I don’t think that is part of your use case.
Thanks for the info! 
My apologies for that. I read that as 25G by mistake.
We have not had anyone report back to us on any issues using the 2.5G on the HL8, as well as our testing during the R&D process did not find any issues with these systems and the 2.5G NIC.
If you are having an issue with the 2.5G NIC, please reach out to info@45homelab.com, and we can get someone to assist you further.
No problem. 
I haven’t made my purchase yet. I’m just gathering info at this point.