I do not believe you do, not even network cables as long as they are the appropriate CAT. I have looked in side a couple of AURALiC, Mark Levinson, and Aurender, the NICs I saw and cross-referenced are nothing but basic NICs, and that is all you need. What is the most throughput you can see on any of these devices 1-2Gbps if that? Your packets arrive to the NIC, the NIC sends them onto the next component up the hardware stack. What does an "audiophile switch" do different to a regular network switch, does it add any barbeque sauce to the Ethernet frame that other regular switches don’t ?
What does an audiophile network cable do different than a regular and compliant cable? Do they add any magic sauce to the payload?
Unlike many other components in HiFi, there is an Ethernet international standard by which NICs, switches and cables must comply to meet the different "CATs".
The only place where you might notice any difference in cables is when you are at or very near the max cable length or bending the cables beyond their bending radius, where cheaper cables might have a little more db loss.
If my memory is correct, Cat5e, Cat6, and Cat6a have a maximum 100meters, Cat7 does too but Cat7 gets advertised for its 100 Gbps speed, and will only work for distances up to 15 meters. Beyond that, it drops to the same 10 Gbps speed of Cat6 and Cat6a (although it still retains its superior 850 Mhz bandwidth).
In 1 or 2 hops with 1 or 2 10Gbps switch you will not be introducing any jitter or packet loss unless there is something bad with the cable, or some other hardware problem.
Now if your network math does not work, because oversubscription for example, then there isn’t any switch or cable can’t do anything about it.
I would love to hear the electrical explanation and sustaining documentation for anything else.
Furthermore, do you think that banks and other financial institutions, where trillions of dollars are to be made in milliseconds, armed forces and other critical and life sustaining services would not be using "special cables or switches" if they provided a performance advantage?
Yes there are switches that can process more switching and routing functions faster than others, but that is processing other more complex functions that are not required for a basic home network, unless you are telling me that you will be doing something like packet inspection among your network switches; but even then they would not do anything to improve the "quality" of the frame or payload.
The fact is that for the most part, unless environmental and security requirements, CAT cables are CAT cables. Either they meet the desired CAT spec or not.
Just my 2 cents.
Spend the money on music, speaker cables, different tubes, but network switches and network cables? I would not.