Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
A tech enthusiast details the process and technical challenges of upgrading a Mac Studio workstation to 25 Gbps Ethernet using a third-party Thunderbolt adapter. The post covers hardware compatibility, thermal management issues, and network performance testing.
Why it matters
It serves as a practical guide for power users looking to bypass hardware limitations in modern computing environments.
I've been using the built-in 10 Gigabit Ethernet on my Mac Studio for a few years. It works fine: I can edit 4K video straight off my NAS over the network, and run backups at around 1 GB/sec.
But... I want more . I upgraded my rack and my NAS to 25 GbE a couple years ago, and wanted to upgrade my main workstation, too.
I looked up 25G networking options for the Mac, and they're all crazy expensive:
The problem is Macs all require Thunderbolt adapters; you can't just plug an inexpensive(ish) PCIe card into a Mac (RIP Mac Pro).
I stopped looking until I saw this blog post . Christian Kohlschütter found a cheap 25G Thunderbolt adapter that uses a server-pulled OCP 2 NIC with a little Thunderbolt 3 adapter board. And it works on any computer with Thunderbolt.
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