Z390 Taichi Ultimate 10GbE network overheating?

Hi!

In two weeks after installing 10GbE network 3 times it stopped working with 'network cable unplugged' error. Reinstalling drivers, rebooting windows did not help. When switching the cable to 1GbE port it was working normally, so the other side should not be in fault. Intially I thought that I have dead 10GbE network, but it started to work after cold boot (shutting down computer and restarting).

One common thing was that network stopped working after few hour gaming sessions or runing PCU heavy simulations. This made me think about overheating, as my 10GbE network adapter gets quite hot and I assume the onboard chip is not much different. The onboard chip heatsink is under VRM heathins and enclosed within plastic cover - this certanly does not help with cooling.

So week ago took of the plastic cover and mounted 60mm fan blowing on the 1/3 of chip radiator that is visible (the rest is under VMR heatsink). Havn't got any network problems since then.

While this is not definite proof, it is quite suspicious. I have i9 9900k CPU, running on default settings, but VMRs get quite hot under CPU load, so I imagine that might lead to heating up the compartment the network chip heatsink is enclosed in.

I'll keep this post updated, but if I will not have any network shutdowns in future, I will have to assume that overheating was the problem.

Yes, haven't had any problems since adding the fan, so now I'm pretty sure that helped. I'll try without the fan running - maybe improving air flow by just removing the plastic shroud is enough.

While adding additional fan might sound crazy - the 10GbE option was one of the main reasons why I picked this board. So without it working I'd asking myself a question - why this board and not simply taichi or even another brand.

I've had the integrated NICs fail or have similar issues on several motherboards even on 1GBE connections. This has always been where I've used the PC as a CCTV or similar server with high continuous network traffic.

These days I buy better grade NIC controller cards which come with heat sinks and seem fine no matter what the load.   I've had similar issues with SATA ports over and above the Intel integrated ones and have also gone the separate card route there.

I think the 'how much can we jam on a motherboard' approach doesn't always work out that well in practice :-(

Just wanted to add that removing the plastic shroud was indeed enough to get rid of the 10GBE network problems. Haven't had one failure since I removed the shroud. I don't have an extra fan.

Thank you wiper for posting your solution

10G ethernet adapter part name is AQC107.
Was able to test it several times (only over WAN/Internet). Delivered constant 8Gbit over ~ 10mins, no crashes.
There was a firmware upgrade 3.1.89 (from here 3.1.44), worked well here: https://www.aquantia.com/drivers-firmware/aqc-100/atlflashupdate_1-2-1_3-1-89/
Also installed the new driver from https://www.aquantia.com/support/driver-download/ 2.1.18, but there were some glitches, not really sure if it was driver related, switched back to 2.1.005 original from the asrock site.
I dont have issuses with it. I however dismounted the hole plastic cover crap from the mainboard, and did not mount any "additional" fans just for this adapter.