I’m looking to upgrade my whole net to 10Gbit and i have two fairly inexpensive paths ahead of me:

• X540-T2, which are fairly cheap in ebay but im not sure if they’re chinese copycats or the real deal, i’ve heard about reliability issues, like not being recognized at all by motherboards.
• Mellanox Cx3, a bit cheaper than X540-T2 but i don’t know if they’re legit or knock offs.

Both options are fairly old by 2023, almost 2024, both hit EoL already and i’m wondering if i should look for newer nics or just get this. Judging from what i’ve read i think i want to go with fiber instead DAC, since nics runs cooler (Lower temps would be really appreciated in my case), apparently they take less power to function and the price of the setup would be also lower for the Cx3 option. I’m a bit on a budget too so i don’t want to go spending 100€+ per nic, i would need just 3 for now.

When it comes to switches, i think one QNAP QSW-2104-2T/S (Or a very similar one) will do the trick for now, i’ll get something better once i can find multi 10Gbit port switches below 400€.