PCIE-I225 PCE x1 Interface to 2.5GbE RJ45 Ports Network Adapter for Windows 11, 10 64bit and Windows Server 2019, 2022, Intel I225V Ethernet Controller, 2.5GbE PCIE NIC Card

RlReceived package the following day! My dog was sitting by the windows when it arrived as he knew it was for him!

My realtek based 1Gbps adapter keeled over in my home linux routing machine so I needed something pretty quick to get our network back up and running before my kiddos revolted and started plotting my demise. It had been a while since I'd had to buy a stand alone NIC so I went looking for what would probably work out of the box in linux. I read good things about this chipset and this was one of the more affordable NICs available featuring the chipset. It's been in service a little over 3 weeks now with some heavier than normal usage (I'm retrieving some collections from The Internet Archive) and it's working fantastically. No problem with bandying about 1Gbps across my home network.

Only lasted eight months, but it was cheap

perfect size, quality, performance

Summary: It's a good card that overall works as expected. I've had some mixed experiences with the Intel I225-V chipset in the past, but the card I received isn't have issues (so far). This card could've used a heatsink, and I'm concerned the lack of one may create issues for some. The green PCB isn't too friendly for a gaming PC. The card was packaged well, about on par with other 2.5Gb NICs at this price point. The card itself was in an antistatic bag. Included in the box were instructions and a disc with the drivers. You can also download drivers from Intel's website (which is my preferred approach). This card looks to be the same as NETELY's offering, ASIN B0BNRJ1FTC. At the time of writing this review, that card was priced the same, but it's a green PCB. I like that a short bracket was included. I have other machines that use the short bracket type. The inclusion of the short bracket seems standard for NICs here on Amazon. The build quality is decent. All of the components look neatly soldered onto the PCB. Part of my initial impression when viewing the listing and receiving the item, I was concerned by the lack of a heatsink. Other 2.5Gb NICs that I've ordered here on Amazon used Realtek controllers and included a relatively large heatsink. This card has dedicated status LEDs for both the activity of the card and an established 2.5Gb link. The LEDs are part of the RJ-45 port itself, which is my preferred approach. Other cards use separate LEDs adjacent to the port, and some use surface-mounted LEDs that bleed light everywhere. I connected this card to a test bench machine, installed the appropriate drivers, and connected it to another 2.5Gb interface using a CAT6 cable. This was a machine-to-machine connection without an intermediate router or switch to skew results. The card performed fine, hitting an average of 2.32 Gbps. This speed is on par with other 2.5Gb cards I've used. I ran the tests over a period of five minutes and didn't see any link dropouts, though the chipset was definitely heating up. I may use an extra heatsink from a Raspberry Pi to mitigate some of the heat on the controller. At the time of writing this review, the price of this card was $25.99. This price is standard for these single port 2.5Gb NICs. The competing cards can offer a different controller. A Realtek controller may have better compatibility for your use case. Unfortunately, it's hard to recommend this card with the lack of a heatsink. As a side note, I have another Intel I225-V NIC in an Asus motherboard. That NIC was basically DOA, and I can only ever get about 1 Mbps through it regardless of cable, OS, configuration, etc. It's a REV3 just like this card. I'm not sure if Intel has worked out these issues; if they haven't I don't know what the probability of getting a dead card would be, but based on the research I did when debugging the motherboard's NIC these I225-V NICs have been problematic for many.

I just turned off my pc, put it in an open slot, turned it back on and it worked! No drivers to install on windows 11. Let’s see how long it lasts ….

This network card did two things for me, number one and allowed me to place an additional network card that's natively supported under Windows 11 in a miniature server at my office so I had an additional ethernet port but it also came with a low profile bracket for smaller computer systems. And I actually used this bracket for my install. So it was great to have pretty much everything I needed to get this thing into a small form factor case. I'm not linking at 2.5Gb because we don't have any 2.5Gb switches at work but hopefully that will change in the near future so this is sort of hedging our bets so that in the future when we get a new switch the system will operate faster. The only thing I noticed, and this is probably due to our HP switch, is there was an instance where depending on the order of reboot the HP switch would claim to negotiate link speed with the unit but wouldn't pass traffic. Doing any other network operation on the System NIC allowed negotiation to reoccur with the switch and fix this issue. I don't believe this is an issue with the card but it is possible that some enterprise level managed switches might have an issue linking at a slower speed with this card. So just make sure you test thoroughly for your environment before you relying on it. But otherwise it looks great to me and I'm very happy with the experience I've had so far.

Terrible speed