High Temp - 378.56

[VH-BIL]

Last night my router RT-AC68U totally crashed and needed a restore to start operating normally.

Bandwidth Monitor is not working and the now I have noticed the Temperature is extremely high. It is that high (83C - 84C) I was thinking it may not be accurate.

I am getting a lot of these errors:

kernel: [truncated] L/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/np

I have selective routing on a VPN and I have the following script running:

#!/bin/sh

sleep 4

iptables -I FORWARD -i br0 -o tun11 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I FORWARD -i tun11 -o br0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.240 -j REJECT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.241 -j REJECT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.242 -j REJECT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.243 -j REJECT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.244 -j REJECT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.245 -j REJECT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.246 -j REJECT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.247 -j REJECT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.248 -j REJECT
iptables -I FORWARD ! -o tun11 -s 192.168.69.249 -j REJECT
iptables -I INPUT -i tun11 -j REJECT
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o tun11 -j MASQUERADE

I really do appreciate the hard work put into this firmware and just wanted to take the time to share my experiences, not complain. I will try the new Beta.

 

[kevinlekiller]

Mine was at 80-90c and crashing all the time, I made a hole in the back of the case, stuck a USB fan on with cable ties, that was last year, hasn't crashed since, temps are in the 40c's

 

[martinr]

?...., I made a hole in the back of the case.....,

Did you remove the rear cover (if so, how?) or did you make the hole with everything in situ (and your fingers crossed)?

 

[RMerlin]

Last night my router RT-AC68U totally crashed and needed a restore to start operating normally.

Bandwidth Monitor is not working and the now I have noticed the Temperature is extremely high. It is that high (83C - 84C) I was thinking it may not be accurate.

Temperature is typical for this router.

Bandwidth monitoring might have issues if NAT acceleration is enabled.

I am getting a lot of these errors:

kernel: [truncated] L/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/npch ==NULL/np

Known issue, related to the Trend Micro engine, and (probably) IPv6.

 

[ASAT]

I have 2x DC fans, 120mm size, strapped to the back of my RT-AC68U with bungee cord. It is overclocked to 1200 MHz. My idle CPU temp is 53C.

My Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is overclocked to 1000 Mhz and overvolted to 6. I use the free aluminum heat sinks that came with the case, and 1x 50mm DC fan. The idle CPU temp is 25 C. It never gets hotter than 44 C, even when I'm trans-coding an H.265 video with ffmpeg at 10 fps.


At what temperature does human skin burn?

Human skin burns to varying degrees of severity as the applied temperature rises. Humans begin to feel a burning pain when skin temperature rises to 111 degrees Fahrenheit (44 C), with first-degree burns developing at 118 F (48 C).

More severe burns occur at higher temperatures. An applied heat of 131 degrees Fahrenheit (55 C) causes second-degree burns on exposed skin. Pain receptors overload and become numb at a temperature of 140 F (60 C). At 162 F (73 C), human tissue is destroyed on contact. The entire range of burn temperatures, from the first appearance of pain to instant destruction, falls well below 212 F (100 C), the boiling point of water.

SOURCE: http://www.ask.com/health/temperature-human-skin-burn-82a1af6b1322b289

 

[Puppa]

86 degrees C! Yeeouch! It's been a while since I fired my AC68 up (pun intended), but I was wondering if, besides a fan, has anyone figured out (without active cooling) how much needs to be turned off on this thing before it cools down?

 

[martinr]

86 degrees C! Yeeouch! It's been a while since I fired my AC68 up (pun intended), but I was wondering if, besides a fan, has anyone figured out (without active cooling) how much needs to be turned off on this thing before it cools down?

More to the point, has anyone ever burnt out an AC68U, or, less dramatically, how common is kevinlekiller's experience (post #2) of reaching temperatures of "80-90c and crashing all the time"? I've had mine for over a year and it's never had so much as a hiccup. It runs at 80c, or, at least it did so until a few days ago, when I fitted a couple of USB fans, just for the sheer hell of it (and the pretty blue LEDs).

 

[kevinlekiller]

Did you remove the rear cover (if so, how?) or did you make the hole with everything in situ (and your fingers crossed)?

Yep, assuming you don't care about the warranty like me:
You need to remove the 4 rubber feet to get access to the phillips screws (or posi drive, didn't pay attention) (Edit, actually that's for the RT-N66u, I think the AC68u snaps off, but can't remember).
Cut off some of the plastic grill (the side with the ethernet ports) using a utility knife / pliers / cutters.
Make a hole slightly smaller than the fan.
Drill a hole in the case near the edge about in the center of where the fan would be to pass a zip tie and use an exiting hole near the center where the sticker is (I think I removed part of the sticker to expose 2 holes in the middle, I only used 1).
Put a metal grill on the fan if you can, using screws to hold it down.
Put a zip tie to hold down the fan, it's more solid than it sounds.

Edit: The fan is a 80mm cooler master with a USB passthrough, scavenged off a laptop cooler (~12$ notepal iirc).

Here's a rough example:

And a picture (was hard to take, not much space to move where it is, sorry for the angle).

 

[martinr]

If that's a real hole, I admire your skills with a utility knife. And if it's a digitally manipulated image, I admire your 'Photoshop' skills.

If you wanted, and had the patience to change it once a month or so, you could trap a small filter cut out of cooker-hood/extractor filter paper between the fan and the router.

I think the back on the RT-AC68U must snap off: there are no visible screws - and no place to hide them.

Nice job.

Thanks.

 

[kevinlekiller]

More to the point, has anyone ever burnt out an AC68U, or, less dramatically, how common is kevinlekiller's experience (post #2) of reaching temperatures of "80-90c and crashing all the time"? I've had mine for over a year and it's never had so much as a hiccup. It runs at 80c, or, at least it did so until a few days ago, when I fitted a couple of USB fans, just for the sheer hell of it (and the pretty blue LEDs).

I think the unit I got has a poor "binned" CPU (I've seen the temp as high as 94c on this unit, it would idle at 88c in a 22c room) and with running an openvpn client, the CPU load would get high, that's when it would crash or freeze usually, but it would crash/freeze randomly even without any CPU load, just less frequently. I'd say it froze more often than it crashed, which was annoying since I'd have to go manually power it off / on.

 

[kevinlekiller]

If that's a real hole, I admire your skills with a utility knife. And if it's a digitally manipulated image, I admire your 'Photoshop' skills.

If you wanted, and had the patience to change it once a month or so, you could trap a small filter cut out of cooker-hood/extractor filter paper between the fan and the router.

I think the back on the RT-AC68U must snap off: there are no visible screws - and no place to hide them.

Nice job.

Thanks.

It's been more than a year and I haven't cleaned it yet, that's in a closet so it's not as dusty as I thought it would get.

You could buy magnetized filters that goes over the fan, now that you mentioned it, I might do that. Something like the silverstone FF81b (can't link here since the forum thinks it's spam).

Edit: The trick is you take a pen, you put the fan on roughly where you want it, you move the pen inside the fan's circle, then you score the plastic with a knife where the pen marking is.

Next, you drill a pilot hole, you stick in needle nose pliers and rip / break the plastic, the plastic will break nicely where you scored it, if there's any rough pieces left, you can use the knife to clean it up.

 

[martinr]

Sounds like a great place to dry your washing.

 

[RMerlin]

I think the unit I got has a poor "binned" CPU (I've seen the temp as high as 94c on this unit, it would idle at 88c in a 22c room) and with running an openvpn client, the CPU load would get high, that's when it would crash or freeze usually, but it would crash/freeze randomly even without any CPU load, just less frequently. I'd say it froze more often than it crashed, which was annoying since I'd have to go manually power it off / on.

Quite often the issue is just poor application of the thermal pad between the heatsink and the chips. Just removing the heatsink and replacing the pad with quality thermal paste can make a significant difference (especially in extreme cases where you are getting close to 90 - which isn't the norm for this router).

 

[RogerSC]

My RT-AC68P often shows the CPU running at about 82 degrees C plus or minus one or two degrees. Not been a problem. It's hotter than the R7000 shows for the same chipset, but the RT-AC68P runs just fine at that temperature. If it got up over 90 degrees C, then I'd get worried. On the other hand, nothing wrong with putting it on a small cooling pad or having a little fan blowing on it to keep it cooler, if you prefer. But you don't need to do that, it should be fine at 82 or 83 degrees C. My R7000 is showing 70 degrees C right at the moment for the CPU, that's fine, too.

 

[MarkRH]

My RT-AC68U seems to hover around 70C but I have the Wireless part disabled. I have it sitting on top of my PC above the power supply which probably isn't the best place but the PC doesn't feel that warm up there.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

Quite often the issue is just poor application of the thermal pad between the heatsink and the chips. Just removing the heatsink and replacing the pad with quality thermal paste can make a significant difference (especially in extreme cases where you are getting close to 90 - which isn't the norm for this router).

100% true but i have to ask why the owner should have to do that, the router should be plug and play. I dont see on the box any were that says Hacking this router apart may be needed because it runs to hot. Just saying.. Wanted to ad my 68R has hit 85C in the summer and never noticed a issue but it kept me thinking about it a lot. Now i dont use the 2.4 G band its disabled and that made a difference plus cooling temps now its a solid 73-75C

 

[VH-BIL]

I might try the fan mod. I work in IT in support and software dev, there has to be spare parts around here.

 

[Deleted member 22229]

You also have to remember a fan will bring a steady flow of air and dust and dirt with it. If your not careful over time this will build up and cause even more heat issues.

 

[RMerlin]

100% true but i have to ask why the owner should have to do that, the router should be plug and play. I dont see on the box any were that says Hacking this router apart may be needed because it runs to hot. Just saying.. Wanted to ad my 68R has hit 85C in the summer and never noticed a issue but it kept me thinking about it a lot. Now i dont use the 2.4 G band its disabled and that made a difference plus cooling temps now its a solid 73-75C

Not saying it's normal, just that it's a common issue with some of Asus's models.

 

[cmillar6]

I have the AC68p with the 1 GHz processor so I assume this runs hotter than the 800Mhz AC68u, mine has been at 82C since the day I fired it up and it has been rock stable. I quit worrying about temps, if it comes to the point I need to cut a hole in the router and attach a fan for stability I'd just RMA it. You just shouldn't have to go to those lengths.