NVIDIA Mellanox MCX346A-BCPN ConnectX-3 Pro EN 40GbE Dual-Port OCP Network Adapter: This is an OCP 2.0 mezzanine network interface card (NIC) based on the Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro EN controller, providing two 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GbE) QSFP+ ports over a PCIe 3.0 x8 host interface. This is an OCP form-factor adapter intended for OCP-compliant servers; it is NOT a standard PCIe low-profile/full-height card and will not seat in a conventional PCIe slot.
Engineering context. The ConnectX-3 Pro EN ASIC supports hardware stateless offloads (TSO, LRO, RSS, checksum), VXLAN and NVGRE tunnel offload, SR-IOV with up to 127 virtual functions, and PCI Express Gen3 at 8.0GT/s providing roughly 64Gb/s of usable host bandwidth. The MCX346A-BCPN is a no-bracket OCP card and is RoHS R6 compliant.
Deployment & use cases. Suited for OCP-based hyperscale and cloud server platforms, virtualization hosts (VMware ESXi, KVM, Hyper-V) requiring SR-IOV, software-defined networking (SDN) overlays using VXLAN/NVGRE encapsulation, storage-front-end traffic, and 40GbE leaf-to-server connectivity into Spectrum or SwitchX-2 top-of-rack switches.
Technical specifications.
- Controller: NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro EN
- Ports: 2 × QSFP+ 40GbE
- Host interface: PCI Express 3.0 x8 (8.0GT/s)
- Form factor: OCP 2.0 mezzanine (no PCIe edge bracket)
- Max line rate per port: 40GbE
- Stateless offloads: TSO, LRO, RSS, checksum
- Tunnel offloads: VXLAN, NVGRE, GENEVE
- Virtualization: SR-IOV (up to 127 VFs)
- RoCE: RDMA over Converged Ethernet v1 and v2
- Compliance: RoHS R6
Compatibility & constraints. Requires an OCP 2.0 mezzanine slot — this card will NOT install in a standard PCIe slot. QSFP+ ports support 40GbE and 4×10GbE breakout with appropriate breakout cables/transceivers; QSFP28 100GbE optics are NOT supported by the ConnectX-3 Pro silicon. Driver support is provided by Mellanox MLNX_OFED for major Linux distributions and by Mellanox WinOF for Windows Server.
Why TES. Each unit is bench-tested by experienced technicians for full link-up at 40GbE on both ports prior to shipment and ships in refurbished condition with minimal cosmetic wear. Order handling time is 1–3 business days. Browse our full networking catalog at T.E.S IT-SOLUTIONS.