MikroTik CRS304-4XG-IN Internal Hardware Overview
Under the rubber feet are four screws. We pulled those out, and the bottom plastic cover popped off.
We could then remove the white plastic cover and see the switch PCB. Or perhaps it would be better to say we could see the heatsinks that sandwich the PCB.
A small note if you ever lose the manual and cannot see the outer label with the MAC addresses and default password. If you open the switch, there is a label with the MAC addresses and default password printed in black and white. This may not be a big deal when you first purchase and deploy it, but if you are reading this in 2-3 years servicing one that someone else has deployed, that information may come in handy.
At this point, we were excited to pull off the heatsink and see the switch chip.
That was a disappointing exercise. It seems the top heatsink is there solely to help dissipate heat from the center of the PCB using a thermal pad as an interface.
Flipping the switch over and removing the big structural heatsink we see what we came here for, the switch chip and PHY.
The heatsink is molded specifically for this switch. Someone spent extra time designing this cooling solution, and it shows. If you look a passive heatsinks on many of the cheap mini PCs we review, the heatsink may contact the CPU and NICs, but the rest is often a flat surface. This has multiple thermal pads and indentations for components on the PCB. There was a lot of effort put into this heatsink and it is why the switch feels so sturdy.
Here, we can see the DRAM package and, more importantly, the two main chips in this solution.
It is a little bit strange that the two Marvell chips use different thermal interface materials. If you were wondering about that pad still on the PCB, our best guess on why it is there is actually to cool the component on the other side of the PCB since it is barren underneath.
The solution here is a two-chip Marvell solution. Patrick thinks this is very similar to the Ubiquiti USW-Flex-XG to the point that we just ordered a new one of those to double-check. For the main switch chip, we have a Marvell Prestera 98DX2528.
Here is the block diagram for the switch chip.
For a PHY, MikroTik is using the Marvell 88X3540-BXE4. This is a 4-port 10GbE PHY from Marvell that is part of the company’s Alaska series. The Alaska PHY series has been around for many years. Supermicro and many others use the 1GbE Alaska PHYs as higher-quality solutions than Intel’s built-in solutions on its embedded motherboards. You can go back to 2013/2014 and the Intel C2750 with Supermicro A1SAi-2750F Platform to see the Alaska series on STH.
For 10Gbase-T, one big challenge is simply driving and receiving a clean signal over the copper wire. Using a high-quality PHY means that the link stays up and a useful signal makes it across the wire.
Looking at the cooling design of the switch, it is clear that the PHY here is one of the hotter parts of the design. When we discuss why 10Gbase-T tends to use more power for a switch or even a SFP+ to 10Gbase-T module, the big driver of that is usually the PHYs. MikroTik went with a well-known Marvell Alaska, which is great.
Next, let us talk about performance.
The article didn’t mention if this switch could handle MultiGbE speeds or not. Is this a straight 10GbE switch? or an 802.3bz switch?
I will be super excited when true Multi-GbE (100/1/2.5/5/10) switches are available at <$25/port.
This is currently 2x that amount.
Where can we buy this in the USA?
Regarding the comment above it should be multi-gig. The miss here for me is that the PoE-in port isn’t 10G; having 5x Nbase-T ports with one powering the switch would really make this a killer/must-have device. The closest to this with a non-hamstrung multi-gig PoE-in port (albeit only at 2.5g) is the USW-Flex-2.5G-5.
The mikrotik website says it has 4 multi gig ports.
1G/2.5G/5G/10G
https://mikrotik.com/product/crs304_4xg_in
I’ve been using this switch for a couple of weeks now and it’s been working great. Yes, it does support MultiGbE speeds. One of the computers plugged in to it has an Intel I226-V 2.5 Gig NIC, and it was auto-negotiated and just worked.
I am also using this switch with 4 WisPi USB dongles that get true 5 GbE.
I doubled the speed of my Proxmox cluster for $200 + 4*$30
I agree with James, the price is rather high considering there’s only 4 ports. For just a few extra shekels the CRS309-1G-8S+IN seems to be a better buy.
Minor detail, the article is credited to Patrick, the author is clearly someone else who refers to Patrick several times in the third person.
@Joel:
The thing is CRS309-1G-8S+IN is SFP+ switch. The one who needs 10GBaseT (RJ45) ports that switch is a no-go. Sheer cost of RJ45 SFP+ transcievers (plus extra heat) makes it not so desirable.
Too bad it misses an SFP+ cage ( 4RJ45 + 1SFP+) would have bee awesome ( would have allowed to interconnect easily with the CRS305)
Nice!
@Oarman, it’s probably Rohit. I was thinking the same thing, though.
Thanks for catching that guys. I copy pasted this one into the CMS and forgot to change the credit.
The ports are multi-gig. If you watch the segment on the 2nd set we actually have a 2.5GbE link up for a bit.
Roc-noc.com has stock FS in the USA
As others have said, this is _almost_ the best small switch. An extra SFP+ port would have done it.
For $30 more you can get 5 10GBase-T ports instead of 4. That product is the Trendnet TEG-S750 which is $229 on Amazon. I know some will say the MicroTik option is L3 but no, MircoTik’s firmware is so bad, so obtuse, so totally isolated from the way any L3 firmware works, just say MicroTik is effectively an unmanaged L2 switch. I already have the MicroTik 4 port and 8 port 10G ethernet switches and they are great for cheap L2 10 gigabit. Learning the extremely strange MicroTik way will warp your mind such that you can no longer administer Cisco, Juniper, HPE, Dell, or any other mainstream switch.
@Charles McCane this switch also supports SwitchOS, Mikrotik’s vastly simpler management interface for switches specifically. For some reason they haven’t updated their product page spec sheet but if clicking the PDF brochure or user manual it lists support for it.
@Charles McCane: The reason for that is that Cisco etc. have much more capable and expensive silicon that can do a bunch of things that budget switch chips can’t do. Many manufacturers who use the budget chips opt for unmanaged switches so you get zero extra functionality, but MikroTik take the other option and try to expose as much of the hardware’s functionality as they can. This does mean that things are often done in an obtuse way, but that’s mostly dictated by the hardware implementation of each feature. So you can’t really fault MikroTik for trying to give you access to as much as possible offered by the hardware.
If you prefer a more logical way of doing things, just pay 10 times the price and get a higher end switch with the extra hardware to make it all work, and put up with the extra power draw as well. But for most of us looking at budget low power devices, we appreciate being able to get as much out of our hardware as we can!
I have one of these switches and my expectations for $200 was low.. However, looking at the line rate compared to a switch I have that cost X4 as much with SFP+ at 10Gbe its almost identical. Great value and will be ordering up another. The power draw is also really low at around 15.7 Watts with all 10Gbe plugged in. 10/10 Cool product..
YuanLey 8-Port 10G Ethernet Switch. $250
Includes rack ears.
The knee-jerk reaction was that anything four-port doesn’t rhyme with must-have: it’s been eight-port or trash for me ever since I moved beyond 100Mbit hubs. Especially since my home-lab core has run out of ports, again (currently 28 Nbase-T ports on 3 switches)
But then I noticed that the 2.5 Gbit 8-ports I deploy around the home’s edge, rarely use more than 4 ports. So at price parity 10Gbit wins, even if some cables laid to long ago may refuse the higher bit-rates.
So perhaps that catchy headline isn’t all wrong…