Router temperatures

[tuomi]

I'm a couple years ahead of you...and yes, we could be grandparents.

Don't like that mentality at all, even younger at 36 although with three little kids so odds are that I'm a grandparent by 50+..

However why would you buy anything new if this device still performs, the next step as I see it if you want any kind of performance is going to pfSense with more potent hardware and just running APs.
Right now that is a waste of money and environmental resources and I will never accept a company gimping their hardware with something similar to planned obsolescence.

Will run my USB-modded 120mm fan and RT AC68u til the latter literally dies.

I have no reason to upgrade until I go past a 1Gbit internet connection which is what I currently am on with approx 40 clients (many very idle ones ofc).

 

[Tech9]

Right now that is a waste of money and environmental resources and I will never accept a company gimping their hardware with something similar to planned obsolescence.

You are going to have to. It's part of the design process now.

 

[Hazel]

After trying two different RT-AC68U/RT-AC86U USB fan kits from Amazon, which both were way too noisy, and as temperature started to rise to above 100°C, I have decided to purchase a Noctua NFP12-Redux 1300 120mm Fan, a Noctua NA-FC1 PWM Fan controller, a Navilock 12V/2A external power supply with a 4 pin connector, an adapter from 4 pin Molex to SATA-V, to connect (with the included cables) the PWM Fan Controller. I also ordered a set of Noctua NA-SAV2 vibration dampening plugs, but these are to thick to fit the small ventilation slots on the back. I've used them nevertheless, pulled them through, cut them off where they make contact with the housing of the router to prevent any vibration.

I've centered the fan on the back, mounted it with Tesa double sided adhesive (but removable) tape strips on the center circle of the fan, making sure it covers the open spaced slots as much as as possible, so it can blow as much air inside as possible, at the lowest possible speed.

The fan controller has a No-stop function, which I enabled, so no matter how low I turn it, it will never completely come to a halt.

Now some of you will call this overkill (and you're probably right), but, in my defense: I'm extremely sensitive to sounds and I haven't even set the fan controller to half of it's capacity and I just can't hear it, even in a completely silent room. If have to keep my head at the back of the router to hear the fan spinning, these Noctua fans are amazingly quiet. If I need to blow the dust out of the router I just turn the fan controller to max and then turn it back down.

It's so incredibly silent, that I haven't regretted my purchase a single moment and my temperature went down about 35°C-40°C. And no matter how much people will tell me, no one can convince me that heat doesn't shorten lifespan and I'd like to enjoy my RT-AC86U for a long, long time without ridiculous high temps.

Noctua NFP12-Redux 1300 120mm fan with external power supply

The external power supply has a 4 pin connection so I needed an adapter from 4-pin Molex to SATA-V to connect to the Noctua NA-FC1 PWM Fan controller.

What it looks like on top of the cabinet. Ambient temperature around 22°C. Fan controller is set to about 40% of it's max capacity.

What it looks like from the front.

Temperature dropped well over 30°C (well, actually even more, as I've witnessed CPU temperatures just over a 100°C, depending on ambient temperatures).

Full size images:

https://imgur.com/a/FI3tmcX

 

[chongnt]

This is impressive. A temperature drop of more than 35°C is the most I have seen. Nicely done while keep the fan noise down.

 

[heysoundude]

Don't like that mentality at all, even younger at 36 although with three little kids so odds are that I'm a grandparent by 50+..

That's how it's supposed to work.
take the 10 mins to watch this when the kids are in bed

 

[Kendo]

@Hazel
Using a silent 12 cm cooler myself, why would that be overkill.
Nice work buddy.

 

[mromero]

After trying two different RT-AC68U/RT-AC86U USB fan kits from Amazon, which both were way too noisy, and as temperature started to rise to above 100°C, I have decided to purchase a Noctua NFP12-Redux 1300 120mm Fan, a Noctua NA-FC1 PWM Fan controller, a Navilock 12V/2A external power supply with a 4 pin connector, an adapter from 4 pin Molex to SATA-V, to connect (with the included cables) the PWM Fan Controller. I also ordered a set of Noctua NA-SAV2 vibration dampening plugs, but these are to thick to fit the small ventilation slots on the back. I've used them nevertheless, pulled them through, cut them off where they make contact with the housing of the router to prevent any vibration.

I've centered the fan on the back, mounted it with Tesa double sided adhesive (but removable) tape strips on the center circle of the fan, making sure it covers the open spaced slots as much as as possible, so it can blow as much air inside as possible, at the lowest possible speed.

The fan controller has a No-stop function, which I enabled, so no matter how low I turn it, it will never completely come to a halt.

Now some of you will call this overkill (and you're probably right), but, in my defense: I'm extremely sensitive to sounds and I haven't even set the fan controller to half of it's capacity and I just can't hear it, even in a completely silent room. If have to keep my head at the back of the router to hear the fan spinning, these Noctua fans are amazingly quiet. If I need to blow the dust out of the router I just turn the fan controller to max and then turn it back down.

It's so incredibly silent, that I haven't regretted my purchase a single moment and my temperature went down about 35°C-40°C. And no matter how much people will tell me, no one can convince me that heat doesn't shorten lifespan and I'd like to enjoy my RT-AC86U for a long, long time without ridiculous high temps.

Noctua NFP12-Redux 1300 120mm fan with external power supply

The external power supply has a 4 pin connection so I needed an adapter from 4-pin Molex to SATA-V to connect to the Noctua NA-FC1 PWM Fan controller.

What it looks like on top of the cabinet. Ambient temperature around 22°C. Fan controller is set to about 40% of it's max capacity.

What it looks like from the front.

Temperature dropped well over 30°C (well, actually even more, as I've witnessed CPU temperatures just over a 100°C, depending on ambient temperatures).

Full size images:

https://imgur.com/a/FI3tmcX

Good job. I have a CPU fan derated to 5V and it works great.

I opened up an expired AC 86U and saw the design blunder Asus made. The CPU thermal pad does not make contact with the shared heat sink. The thermal pads on the radios do make contact. I thought of putting some Arctic Silver on the CPU thermal pad to bridge the gap but a telco engineer friend said that was not a good idea.

When I have time I may make the copper shim adaptation.

My engineer friend examined the rear of the router, and also the bottom. Terrible airflow design. Possible mods would be to cut off the bottom stand, and also remove 50-75% of the V shape solid plastic to make for more cooling fin intake for the fan(s) mod.

Have a bigger fan like yours on order, but for now the CPU cooler fan is working great. Staying on 384.19 Merlin release and avoiding anything else like the plague.

 

[AntonK]

Perhaps all you AC86U owners should toss your routers in the garbage, and then pool your purchasing power and see what kind of discount you can get on a group purchase of AX86U units.

 

[Hazel]

Perhaps all you AC86U owners should toss your routers in the garbage, and then pool your purchasing power and see what kind of discount you can get on a group purchase of AX86U units.

Yeah, we considered that already but international shipping costs are a thingy and now they're starting to complain about chip shortages for the years to come. So for now, I guess we'll just have to settle for our RT-AC86U's, which is, besides its airflow design flaws and non-contact thermal pads, still a great router.

As ASUS latest changelog for the RT-AC86U (and only for this model) mentions a fix for the continuous high CPU usage, I hope for those without active cooling, that temps will go down (somewhat) within reasonable values.

But thanks nevertheless for your suggestion.

 

[gattaca]

^^^^Without a 3rd party teardown, evaluation and verification of what ASUS (or ANY router maker) does inside any model - we don't know - all models could share similar cost/thermal compromises. ASUS's AX86U, uses a similar vertical design (but it has some opening changes) so they may have made the same or similar thermal cost trade-offs with heatsinks and thermal pads inside it! I've only seen the "FCC pictures" never an actual owners disassembly. FWIW, I own AC86U/AX86U/AC68U/AC1900 units and found it simpler over the years to attach 1 x 120mm fan to the rear as we have discussed in several threads with many options. Then, when I finally waterfall my used routers to eBay, I usually get descent $ for them. Stay safe, stay alive. Peace.

 

[bbunge]

After trying two different RT-AC68U/RT-AC86U USB fan kits from Amazon, which both were way too noisy, and as temperature started to rise to above 100°C, I have decided to purchase a Noctua NFP12-Redux 1300 120mm Fan, a Noctua NA-FC1 PWM Fan controller, a Navilock 12V/2A external power supply with a 4 pin connector, an adapter from 4 pin Molex to SATA-V, to connect (with the included cables) the PWM Fan Controller. I also ordered a set of Noctua NA-SAV2 vibration dampening plugs, but these are to thick to fit the small ventilation slots on the back. I've used them nevertheless, pulled them through, cut them off where they make contact with the housing of the router to prevent any vibration.

I've centered the fan on the back, mounted it with Tesa double sided adhesive (but removable) tape strips on the center circle of the fan, making sure it covers the open spaced slots as much as as possible, so it can blow as much air inside as possible, at the lowest possible speed.

The fan controller has a No-stop function, which I enabled, so no matter how low I turn it, it will never completely come to a halt.

Now some of you will call this overkill (and you're probably right), but, in my defense: I'm extremely sensitive to sounds and I haven't even set the fan controller to half of it's capacity and I just can't hear it, even in a completely silent room. If have to keep my head at the back of the router to hear the fan spinning, these Noctua fans are amazingly quiet. If I need to blow the dust out of the router I just turn the fan controller to max and then turn it back down.

It's so incredibly silent, that I haven't regretted my purchase a single moment and my temperature went down about 35°C-40°C. And no matter how much people will tell me, no one can convince me that heat doesn't shorten lifespan and I'd like to enjoy my RT-AC86U for a long, long time without ridiculous high temps.

Noctua NFP12-Redux 1300 120mm fan with external power supply

The external power supply has a 4 pin connection so I needed an adapter from 4-pin Molex to SATA-V to connect to the Noctua NA-FC1 PWM Fan controller.

What it looks like on top of the cabinet. Ambient temperature around 22°C. Fan controller is set to about 40% of it's max capacity.

What it looks like from the front.

Temperature dropped well over 30°C (well, actually even more, as I've witnessed CPU temperatures just over a 100°C, depending on ambient temperatures).

Full size images:

https://imgur.com/a/FI3tmcX

What a pile of unnecessary equipment!

 

[Hazel]

Now some of you will call this overkill (and you're probably right)

What a pile of unnecessary equipment!

Thanks! For a minute I was afraid that everyone would agree with my decisions, but as said, you're probably right. Glad at least one was willing to keep the balance

 

[Darkje]

Only coppermod no additional fans no nothing. on 86u

 

[Cr00zng]

^^^^Without a 3rd party teardown, evaluation and verification of what ASUS (or ANY router maker) does inside any model - we don't know - all models could share similar cost/thermal compromises. ASUS's AX86U, uses a similar vertical design (but it has some opening changes) so they may have made the same or similar thermal cost trade-offs with heatsinks and thermal pads inside it! I've only seen the "FCC pictures" never an actual owners disassembly. FWIW, I own AC86U/AX86U/AC68U/AC1900 units and found it simpler over the years to attach 1 x 120mm fan to the rear as we have discussed in several threads with many options. Then, when I finally waterfall my used routers to eBay, I usually get descent $ for them. Stay safe, stay alive. Peace.

Searching for AX86U teardown resulted in pretty much nothing. Some of the information found and my personal view of the AX86U's thermal design posted in this thread.

It's not unreasonable to state, that the AX86U thermal design is worse, than the AC86U's. The name label on the AX is slanted and there's a solid surface right over the CPU and the memory:

While initially, there had been two 80mm Noctua fans on my AX86U router, the one over the CPU and memory had been removed. There's no reason to have a fan, 60-70% of the area blocked off. This is what I've ended up with:

There was no picture taken after adding the fan. As such, just laid the router on its face to take the picture. The router temperature with the single fan is the best option:

 

[Cr00zng]

Only coppermod no additional fans no nothing. on 86u

View attachment 33673

That would require disassembling the router. Do you have a link how to do it and the type of copper suitable for this purpose?

Just curious, if you added the copper directly to the CPU.

TIA...

 

[Darkje]

That would require disassembling the router. Do you have a link how to do it and the type of copper suitable for this purpose?

Just curious, if you added the copper directly to the CPU.

TIA...

Actually there is a topic here on snb. And yes you need to take it apart. But there where 2 options .. buy a new one. Or fix it. Since the temps where reaching over 95 degrees. I really noticed bad performance. So I measured the size between CPU and heatsink. And cut a piece of copper in the same size. In my case I used a old CPU laptop cooler. I added some thermal compound. And put it back together. Temp dropped drastically and yep warrentee void. But asus is not so good in warrentee anyway... So this was a gamble. I bought multiple asus routers in those years and I only want asus because of @RMerlin fw version. I also modded the 68u. And use them as aimesh. Cheap solution and better quality. And let's see if this solution will be durable.

 

[JWoo]

What everyone is doing to lower the temperature of their beloved routers is commendable. Yet it should be unnecessary.

 

[Cr00zng]

Actually there is a topic here on snb. And yes you need to take it apart. But there where 2 options .. buy a new one. Or fix it. Since the temps where reaching over 95 degrees. I really noticed bad performance. So I measured the size between CPU and heatsink. And cut a piece of copper in the same size. In my case I used a old CPU laptop cooler. I added some thermal compound. And put it back together. Temp dropped drastically and yep warrentee void. But asus is not so good in warrentee anyway... So this was a gamble. I bought multiple asus routers in those years and I only want asus because of @RMerlin fw version. I also modded the 68u. And use them as aimesh. Cheap solution and better quality. And let's see if this solution will be durable.

Thanks...

In all fairness, most tech companies act the same, when it comes to warranty...

Found the link for modding the heatsink for the router. My AX86U is about two weeks old, already added an 80mm Noctua fan with good results, CPU temperature is 46-50C. The copper mod would drop this temperature to 35-40C. Once I find the correct copper stock, I may just proceed with it...

 

[Tech9]

Found the link for modding the heatsink for the router.

The link is for AC86U. You have AX86U. What you're planning to do with it is unnecessary. No reported overheating issues with AX86U.

 

[Cr00zng]

The link is for AC86U. You have AX86U. What you're planning to do with it is unnecessary. No reported overheating issues with AX86U.

Yes, thank you... I am aware that the AX router is different, albeit somewhat similar based on the PCB layout.

Correct, there's no overheating issue with the AX86U; especially after adding an 80mm 5V fan. Neither the fan, nor the copper shim mod necessary, I agree. Except, I like to mod electronic devices, among other things, mainly changing the device thermal envelop to run cooler.