There seem to be genuine, but used, 10G NICs from many vendors under $40 (Myricom, Mellanox, Chelsio) which might be a cheaper option for a home lab setup. Ev

There seem to be genuine, but used, 10G NICs from many vendors under $40 (Myricom, Mellanox, Chelsio) which might be a cheaper option for a home lab setup. Even 10Gbase-SR SFP+ modules are cheap used, but for a 2 card setup, I'd go CX4 or SFP-DA / Twinax. Most of the failures we see at work in the field around 10GbE or 40GbE hardware is the SFP+ / QSFP modules.