If you make a decision on a 10G card (SFP or ethernet) I'd like to hear what you picked.
10gbase-t ethernet is harder to pick, a lot of those cards run incredibly hot particularly the ones that expect server style cooling. Heard bad things about all of them.
Also heard that Windows has a hard time reaching 10G anyway.
It really shouldn't. Microsoft invented or popularized Receive Side Scaling [1], which helps get things lined up for high throughput; but applications probably need to do a bit of work too.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/n...
Silicom PEG210 Silicom PE210G2BPI40-T-SD-BC7 Intel x540 based bypass NIC. In case you want to have the two ports connect together when the computer is off or something. Setup time is a bit more, but you can also configure them to act like normal NICs.
Usually show up around $15-25 like other x540 dual rj45 cards, but sometimes a bit less, cause they're weird.