QPC will only take certain network cables.
QPC will only take certain network cables.
My PC only accepts one specific network cable. All other cables work fine with routers, switches, and other gear. The problem comes down to the cat 5 wire; everything else is cat 5e. My motherboard is an MSI Pro Z690 that I bought this year. Is the computer part broken, or could there be another reason?
It probably isn't just the port, though maybe it could be something else. Are you saying the port won't even come on? That's much more likely than getting slow or having errors. You'd almost certainly have old cat5 cables because everyone switched to cat5e way back then. I guess those cables aren't actually ethernet ones at all. Most of them are flat with wires that are too small to work right. 2.5g ports usually don't care much for bad cables anyway, even if the cable is fine. Just a scratch inside the RJ45 plug can stop it from sending data properly. I had one with tiny damaged plastic blocking just one pin, but you could only see that with a magnifier.
You are right, the connection isn't working at all. It looks like it is just a real CAT5 cable. When my usual CAT5e one didn't work, I thought it was broken and changed to another. But then again and again until I dug deep enough into my old network junk and found the now working CAT5 cable. Later, I tested every CAT5e cable on other devices since it seemed unlikely all of them would suddenly break. Some cables are probably not up to the CAT5e standard, but they do work on different gear. A couple of them, I fixed myself with a more expensive CAT5e cable type just in case 2.5G ports aren't that tolerant and won't accept an old CAT5 cable. I will try updating the driver; I saw there was a new release back in November. If that doesn't help maybe I'll dig up some other CAT53 cables to test them. If nothing works then I will contact MSI.
Cable detection and speed depend on voltage levels, not just firmware or drivers. These things happen when chips are made during production. Most times with driver problems, nothing works at all no matter what you plug in. If you think it's a driver issue, try booting from a Linux USB image. That usually supports the 2.5 chipset and fixes things fast. You can quickly blame Microsoft for causing this. I guess it could be a bad port, but that is very rare. The real solution is just to return the whole motherboard, which is a huge hassle. If those don't work, you'll get a quick fix with an add-in card like PCIe or USB3, and they are cheap enough.