Realtek 8111E making me lose my mind- using base 100T instead of 1000T, acting unreliably

Hi, currently working on a Crapintosh after my MPB bit the dust a few days ago. It's a Dell Inspiron 660 with the following specs:

Computer specs:-Motherboard: ASRock B75 Pro3-M-CPU: Intel Core i5-3330 2.99 GHz (Ivy Bridge 3rd gen)-RAM: Pareema 8GB (2x4 GB) DDR3-Drive: Samsung 860 Evo SSD 500GB-GPU: Asus Radeon HD 7770 2GB

Initially I thought ethernet was working fine. The ASRock mobo I have uses the Realtek 8111E for LAN. I installed ReaktekRTL8111.kext, fixed S/L/E permissions, cleared cache.

At first, I was getting speeds at what I was expecting, around 700 mbps. However, after maybe 10-20 mins it would drop to sub 100 mbps. Connection got really unstable, cutting in and out, dipping to 1mbps randomly. I also can't download files at all without it taking up most of the bandwidth, meaning that if I'm downloading something big, I wouldn't even be able to reliably open up any websites until its done.

I also noticed in Network → Ethernet → Advanced → Hardware that my ethernet was automatically being changed to 100T instead of base 1000T.

I've been seeing that many people are having issues with this specific chipset. Here's what I did so far to try to fix it:

• Deleted NetworkInterfaces.plist and preferences.plist from Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
• Uninstalled and reinstalled RealtekRTL8111.kext both in EFI/CLOVER/kexts/other, then deleted it and put it in S/L/E
• Patched RTL8111.kext config.plist to set EEE from YES to NO.
• Tried out an Atheros kext that someone claimed worked for them. It didn't work for me, nor did it make sense but I tried it anyways.
• Tried out alternative RealtekR1000SL.kext that has explicit support for 8111E (this allowed me to connect to ethernet but the issue still persisted)
• Went into BIOS to make 100% sure that PXE Boot wasn't on.
• Updated RTL8111 from v.2.2.1 to v2.2.2.
• Attempted to force base 1000T in Network → Ethernet → Advanced → Hardware

Any idea on what the hell is going on here? I'm kinda at a loss for words. At first, I was getting those 700mbps speeds I was expecting and later a drop in speed and reliability. But now after messing with it, I'm not even getting those speeds anymore. It's just consistently 80-90mpbs with tons of drop outs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated... thanks a ton. I had a few people try to help me in the r/hackintosh discord to no avail.