I have ten gigabits throughout most of my house, and you're right: copper is not happy pushing ten gigs.

My 10 gigabit thunderbolt dongle weighs about a pound, and I think 90+% of that weight is just heatsink. If I've had it plugged in for awhile, if I accidentally touch that dongle it actually hurts because it's so hot. I cannot image that much heat is good for, well, anything.

I have another Thunderbolt dongle that has an SFP+ module, so I ran a fiber line from my switch to my computer, and that runs considerably cooler. That's what I use nowadays.

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myrandomcomment 3 hours ago | parent [-]

What standard of cable? When I rewired I ran Cat6a everywhere. My longest 10G run is ~70 meters and works just fine. Anytime I had a link issue it was because I did not do the best job in termination on the keystone jack.

To be clear the Cat6a is thicker than Cat6 and harder to work with. It makes termination a bit more tricky.

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tombert 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I use Cat 8.

The cables themselves don't get too hot, but the dongles themselves seem to get really hot. I'm assuming that's a known issue given the size of the heatsinks on them.

	▲	andwur a minute ago \| parent [-]
		Unfortunately that's non-DAC copper cabling life it seems. They build them to work at the rated speed at the maximum rated distance (on the transceiver, not the spec) and none of them appear to link train to reduce the power output over shorter runs. If you use a DAC they usually run cool, and optical is even cooler.