A Little Cooling and A Big Temp Drop

[Wallace_n_Gromit]

I'd just leave it in front of your air vent .It seems to be doing the trick and you won't be sucking dust into it

I don't think my wife would appreciate the aestetics for that solution. Would look qutie funny to have a asus router duct taped to the top of a large room HEPA air cleaner. Maybe I could post a pic of that. Even a better idea, maybe have a competition for the most extreme, ridiculous router cooling solution!

 

[AzamAzid]

Have an AC88 that has the dual arm7 cpu, and I noticed that cpu temps were always in the 80s (C). Not terribly hot, but seemed like a possible long term life stressor, so I decided to experiment. Had a cheap 4 inch USB fan that I sat beside the router (vents are on the side) and amazingly this cheap and easy cooling experiment dropped the temp down to 55 C ! Don't know if it will have any stability benefits, but I have since place my modem near the air stream also. Fan operates on just a few watts. Should be even more important in terms of longevity/stability as summer approaches.

Appreciate if you could provide photos of your AC88 custom cooling

 

[Morris]

I just added a 120mm fan at 5V to run it at about half speed so it's quiet. This move was drive by these repeated log entries:
May 17 17:45:42 check_watchdog: [check_watchdog] restart watchdog for no heartbeat
May 17 17:45:42 rc_service: check_watchdog 1929:notify_rc restart_watchdog
May 17 17:45:42 custom_script: Running /jffs/scripts/service-event (args: restart watchdog)
May 17 17:45:42 custom_script: Running /jffs/scripts/service-event-end (args: restart watchdog)

In 5 minutes CPU dropped from 90C to 64C. Even if it dose not correct the above, it could help the router last loner

Morris

 

[royarcher]

Appreciate if you could provide photos of your AC88 custom cooling

I just added a 120mm fan at 5V to run it at about half speed so it's quiet. This move was drive by these repeated log entries:
May 17 17:45:42 check_watchdog: [check_watchdog] restart watchdog for no heartbeat
May 17 17:45:42 rc_service: check_watchdog 1929:notify_rc restart_watchdog
May 17 17:45:42 custom_script: Running /jffs/scripts/service-event (args: restart watchdog)
May 17 17:45:42 custom_script: Running /jffs/scripts/service-event-end (args: restart watchdog)

In 5 minutes CPU dropped from 90C to 64C. Even if it dose not correct the above, it could help the router last loner

Morris

that temperature drop you mentioned it,as you pointed out,only on half speed if it's like my fan it will drop to the mid to high 40s on full speed

 

[Morris]

that temperature drop you mentioned it,as you pointed out,only on half speed if it's like my fan it will drop to the mid to high 40s on full speed

I don't see the need to get that cool. Silence is golden!

Morris

 

[royarcher]

I don't see the need to get that cool. Silence is golden!

Morris

to true I only turn it up to the max when we are streaming video or music then you don't hear it at all

 

[JWoo]

IMHO. this is way overkill https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0721SYYTF/?tag=snbforums-20. A solution in search of a problem.

That router in the photo felt loved and it performed better.

 

[putergod]

My AC88 started getting unstable. It would boot me offline pretty much every few hours going in and out of an online state for 30mins or so. Sometimes a reboot would fix it, other times not. This went on for a few months. I noticed temps running 80+ constantly, so I built me a cooling solution that dropped the temps down to about a constant 50 degrees. This helped, but I was still getting booted about once, sometimes twice, a day (with the same symptoms). So I broke down and bought an AX88, and I'm hoping that since it will be on this cooler for it's lifetime, that it'll last much longer. My AC88 was only 2-3 years old, but was running those temps 24/7 all that time.

Moral of my short story... 80 is too damn hot if you want a decent lifespan (and for a freaking $300-$400 router, 2-3 years is not nearly enough). I can't believe Asus has STILL not done something about the temps. Put a damn fan in them!
BTW, this is my 3rd Asus router to burn up in the past 10 years. If the new one burns up, with the cooling pad, I will never buy another Asus router. I just really like the Merlin firmware, or I wouldn't have bought one this time.

 

[royarcher]

My AC88 started getting unstable. It would boot me offline pretty much every few hours going in and out of an online state for 30mins or so. Sometimes a reboot would fix it, other times not. This went on for a few months. I noticed temps running 80+ constantly, so I built me a cooling solution that dropped the temps down to about a constant 50 degrees. This helped, but I was still getting booted about once, sometimes twice, a day (with the same symptoms). So I broke down and bought an AX88, and I'm hoping that since it will be on this cooler for it's lifetime, that it'll last much longer. My AC88 was only 2-3 years old, but was running those temps 24/7 all that time.

Moral of my short story... 80 is too damn hot if you want a decent lifespan (and for a freaking $300-$400 router, 2-3 years is not nearly enough). I can't believe Asus has STILL not done something about the temps. Put a damn fan in them!
BTW, this is my 3rd Asus router to burn up in the past 10 years. If the new one burns up, with the cooling pad, I will never buy another Asus router. I just really like the Merlin firmware, or I wouldn't have bought one this time.

what is the ambient temperature of the room you keep your router's? 80 c doesn't sound that hot your problems may lay elsewhere??

 

[putergod]

what is the ambient temperature of the room you keep your router's? 80 c doesn't sound that hot your problems may lay elsewhere??

80 degrees C is pretty freaking hot. It may be within the claimed "design parameters", but it will shorten the life of any IC.
Ambient temp varies between 65 F and 74 F depending on the outside temp.

To put my issues another way... I've had several Asus and Netgear routers (and some linksys). The Asus routers get hot to the touch, the Netgear routers only get warm. Linksys isn't what it once was, so I don't mess with them anymore. The Asus routers have ALL failed within 2-3 years (ALL of them!), none of the Netgear routers have failed (even ones well over 10 years old - my daughter is currently using a Netgear I bought over 7 years ago). Every Asus router I have replaced was due to failure. Every Netgear router I have replaced was due to "upgrading" (or wanting to go back to Asus-Merlin firmware).

I like the Asus Merlin firmware, which only runs on Asus routers. I've used others like DD-WRT, Tomato, and Gargoyle, but like Asus-Merlin the best. However, if this brand new $300 router fails, I'm going back to Netgear for good.

 

[Kendo]

Silent cooling (not mounted) for the latest addition AC86U, much better than stock temps with little effort.

 

[heysoundude]

that temperature drop you mentioned it,as you pointed out,only on half speed if it's like my fan it will drop to the mid to high 40s on full speed

this is what I envision - designing and 3d printing - for the back of an ac86u, so the fan pulls air into a duct that is attached to /directed at the lower cooling vents on the case above the stand leg.
pushing a greater cool air mass into the natural convection cooling inlet designed by asus engineers should help things stay in the 40-50C range where the machine can live forever

 

[Brian Biggs]

My RT-AC86U has been somewhat unreliable lately. Mostly the user interface randomly locking up and not letting me log in and Guest WiFi SSIDs disappearing or not working. Router is set to reboot nightly and that usually fixes the UI problem. Sometimes it is locked up in the mornings after a fresh reboot and I have no Internet access. Reboots in the middle of the day will fix the WiFi problems for a while. Currently, the HTTP UI port is working, but HTTPS is not.

Anyway, I happened to notice that this sucker is running unbelievable HOT, if the graph is correct. I mean, yikes! Is this temp readout correct? The router feels warm to the touch, but not like it's got an almost 180 degree F CPU cooking in there! If it really is that hot, could that be the cause of my general reliability issues?

 

[Protos]

AC5300

Laptop cooler. Won't ever run a router without one now.
10 dollars. Silent ... dropped temps 31c

 

[anotherengineer]

Nice stuff

I will just leave this here

NF-A8 5V

The NF-A8 5V is a dedicated 5V version of Noctua’s award-winning, premium-quality NF-A8 80mm fan. Featuring an AAO (Advanced Acoustic Optimisation) standard frame and sophisticated aerodynamic design measures such as Flow Acceleration Channels, the NF-A8 is renowned for its superior performance...

noctua.at

NF-A6x25 5V

Featuring advanced aerodynamic design measures such as Flow Acceleration Channels and Noctua’s AAO frame, the NF-A6x25 5V is a dedicated 5V version of Noctua’s highly optimised, premium-quality quiet 60x25mm fan. Smooth Commutation Drive technology and Noctua’s reference-class SSO2 bearing...

noctua.at

 

[heysoundude]

My RT-AC86U has been somewhat unreliable lately. Mostly the user interface randomly locking up and not letting me log in and Guest WiFi SSIDs disappearing or not working. Router is set to reboot nightly and that usually fixes the UI problem. Sometimes it is locked up in the mornings after a fresh reboot and I have no Internet access. Reboots in the middle of the day will fix the WiFi problems for a while. Currently, the HTTP UI port is working, but HTTPS is not.

Anyway, I happened to notice that this sucker is running unbelievable HOT, if the graph is correct. I mean, yikes! Is this temp readout correct? The router feels warm to the touch, but not like it's got an almost 180 degree F CPU cooking in there! If it really is that hot, could that be the cause of my general reliability issues?

View attachment 33920

Not to worry - your temp readout is in fahrenheit. we talk Celsius most of the time. find a converter and put your mind at ease that it won't imminently burst into flame.

 

[mromero]

My RT-AC86U has been somewhat unreliable lately. Mostly the user interface randomly locking up and not letting me log in and Guest WiFi SSIDs disappearing or not working. Router is set to reboot nightly and that usually fixes the UI problem. Sometimes it is locked up in the mornings after a fresh reboot and I have no Internet access. Reboots in the middle of the day will fix the WiFi problems for a while. Currently, the HTTP UI port is working, but HTTPS is not.

Anyway, I happened to notice that this sucker is running unbelievable HOT, if the graph is correct. I mean, yikes! Is this temp readout correct? The router feels warm to the touch, but not like it's got an almost 180 degree F CPU cooking in there! If it really is that hot, could that be the cause of my general reliability issues?

View attachment 33920

That is 80°C, way too hot for comfort no matter what the Asus affiliates will proclaim. Best practice is to keep it below 65°C - 149°F.

Get a fan, stay off the buggy 386.2_4 version, disable Trend Micro and your router will thank you.

 

[Brian Biggs]

Not to worry - your temp readout is in fahrenheit. we talk Celsius most of the time. find a converter and put your mind at ease that it won't imminently burst into flame.

I knew my reading was in Fahrenheit and that a lot of the other readings in here were in Celsius. I think I misread that 60 Celsius was "normal", so figured mine was running hot. Looks like the 80 I see IS "normal".

I actually had a dual fan lying around that I was going to use to cool down my stereo receiver, but ended up not needing to. I plugged those in to the USB port, just leaned them up against the back of the router, and now I get this. Unbelievable. I'll look for a more permanent fan solution this weekend.

To @mromero, I'll turn off Trend Micro as well. Thanks. Too bad, it's a handy feature.

I have not been reading up on the upgrades either, so I didn't realize 386.2_4 was buggy. What version should I be using? Is it just buggy in general, or in a particular area? Not to take this thread down a different path, but can you point me to a post talking about the problems with 386.2_4? I'll go looking myself as well.

Thanks to all for the help and tips.

 

[heysoundude]

I knew my reading was in Fahrenheit and that a lot of the other readings in here were in Celsius. I think I misread that 60 Celsius was "normal", so figured mine was running hot. Looks like the 80 I see IS "normal".

I actually had a dual fan lying around that I was going to use to cool down my stereo receiver, but ended up not needing to. I plugged those in to the USB port, just leaned them up against the back of the router, and now I get this. Unbelievable. I'll look for a more permanent fan solution this weekend.

View attachment 33925

To @mromero, I'll turn off Trend Micro as well. Thanks. Too bad, it's a handy feature.

I have not been reading up on the upgrades either, so I didn't realize 386.2_4 was buggy. What version should I be using? Is it just buggy in general, or in a particular area? Not to take this thread down a different path, but can you point me to a post talking about the problems with 386.2_4? I'll go looking myself as well.

Thanks to all for the help and tips.

a ~20 degreeC temp drop on the CPU is nothing to disregard...and can likely be improved upon.

I noticed the office was a little warmer than usual today, so I pulled a 10" fan I have out of the basement and set it up on the floor about 4' below where my ac86u sits pointed upwards past the vicinity of the router. just getting the air moving in the space made a difference- CPU temps dropped by 2C (now its 4C lower in the evening).
my conclusion is that the passive cooling in this model (and likely others) can be improved on, as people have shown in a variety of threads on this board.

you should look in the Asuswrt-Merlin Add-ons subforum about replacing what you'll be missing of the TrendMicro stuff, and going well beyond what it does. I suspect you'll be pleasantly surprised at what some community members have come up with: you'll be far more private and secure with adblocking, a firewall and your own DNS (and possibly with your own VPN), and one or another flavour of QoS will smooth out whatever bumps there may be between your network devices and your internet connection. those scripts are heavyweight champions with an all-KO record, and it's well worth the adventure installing and setting them up (the writers have made it more simple than you fear that to be), plus theres a great peer-support network here in case the devs dont see your help requests

 

[Morris]

I knew my reading was in Fahrenheit and that a lot of the other readings in here were in Celsius. I think I misread that 60 Celsius was "normal", so figured mine was running hot. Looks like the 80 I see IS "normal".

I actually had a dual fan lying around that I was going to use to cool down my stereo receiver, but ended up not needing to. I plugged those in to the USB port, just leaned them up against the back of the router, and now I get this. Unbelievable. I'll look for a more permanent fan solution this weekend.

View attachment 33925

To @mromero, I'll turn off Trend Micro as well. Thanks. Too bad, it's a handy feature.

I have not been reading up on the upgrades either, so I didn't realize 386.2_4 was buggy. What version should I be using? Is it just buggy in general, or in a particular area? Not to take this thread down a different path, but can you point me to a post talking about the problems with 386.2_4? I'll go looking myself as well.

Thanks to all for the help and tips.

The Trend Micro features do exactly what there supposed to do. There have been some issues in the past yet I feel they have been solved. While some of the add on security code works, it adds a burden of verifying reports and understanding them. "Buggy 386.2_4 code"? Works great for the vast majority. I do agree, cool down the router.

Morris