TapTechNews May 13th news, Lianke recently launched a single-port 5GbE wired network card equipped with the Realtek RTL8126 chip, including PCIe and M.2 versions, catering to the high-end gaming market, priced from 89 yuan.
The RTL8126 chip adopts a QFN56 package with dimensions of 8x8(mm) and a maximum power consumption of 1.7W. It can be seen as an upgraded version of Realtek's previous 2.5GbE Ethernet chip RTL8125, with the requirement for PCIe channel also upgraded to PCIe 3.1x1.
Prior to the RTL8126 chip, consumer-level motherboards that wanted to achieve 5Gb wired network connection had to use the Aquion series chips from Marvel, which were more expensive and had higher heat generation.
TapTechNews has reported that motherboard manufacturers originally planned to start mass application of the Realtek RTL8126 in the 'Refresh' semi-upgraded Z790 motherboards last year, but many motherboards abandoned the chip due to stability issues.
Currently, the known motherboards using the Realtek 5GbE wired network card are the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z790 FORMULA, Gigabyte Z790 AORUS PRO X (and WIFI 7 version).
The appearance of the independent Realtek RTL8126 5GbE expansion card not only means that old motherboard users can further increase wired network bandwidth, but also implies that the new generation of mid-to-high-end motherboard platforms to be launched in the second half of this year will accelerate the deployment of 5GbE support.