MicroTik just announced a new 90W PoE++ switch. The Mikrotik CRS320-8P-8B-4S+RM has 8-ports of 802.3af/at, 8-ports of 8-ports of 802.3af/at/bt with up to 90W PoE++, and four 10G SFP+ ports.
MikroTik CRS320-8P-8B-4S+RM 90W PoE Switch Announced
Starting with the front of the switch, we have eight ports of 802.3af/at PoE/ PoE+ ports.
Next to those, we have eight ports of 802.3af/at/bt and that support up to a full 90W per port for PoE++ devices, not just 60W like some switches we see.
Next to that, we see a console and management port along with four SFP+ 10G ports.
The switch chip is the Marvell Prestera 98DX226S, which MikroTik has used before in a few other models.
A 600W power supply powers all of this, with a maximum of about 36W for the switch. A second 600W power supply can be added to the single switch to get up to 963W of power output. That should be enough to power all of the PoE+ and PoE++ ports fully.
Final Words
Will have our review when we can. Many of our readers will immediately think, “Why not 2.5GbE?” There are a lot of WiFi 7 APs that need more than a 1Gbps uplink, so that is a valid question. At the same time, PoE is being used in a lot of non-AP applications. That is something we will likely go into more in our review. The power supply situation is also very interesting in this switch, with MikroTik using server-style Gospower power supplies instead of some of the other smaller power supplies that we have seen.
We have a switch that we are going to feature in a review, but you can learn a bit more in this video.
I’m not gonna lie, I sped through the article just looking to see if the switch offered any 10GB PoE ports.
What devices can use 10Gb PoE?
Wifi 7 access points for one
Yup, Wifi 7 access points. I’m using them on my Netgear MS510TXUP…
What is with the obsession of PoE and Vendor’s insistence to make switches take more space that the guts inside need to be? If decide to have AP and decide that I need PoE, then I will have a side switch for that purpose. Meanwhile, I save some energy/a few bucks.
Where are the hardware-routing L3 switches?
> Many of our readers will immediately think, “Why not 2.5GbE?”
I didn’t think any readers would be asking that given how many budget/home use 2.5 GbE switches have been covered over the last few months and how many people seem to be tired of hearing about them. I’m wondering why the PoE ports aren’t 10 or 25 G myself, given how many devices can easily max out 1 and 2.5 G ports.
The PoE++ ports on this are nice, but I think if they are only 1 G it’s going to limit the appeal of this device, as the biggest use case for the increased power (WiFi 7 and later) has already exceeded what 1 G ports can deliver.
@Tempo Gigante, some people run VLAN’s having two managed switches is more work.
I do wonder why they left out 2.5 GbE ports, if they want to support Wifi 6 (and higher) then that is often a must.
Sigh.
C’mon Mikrotik!
WAPs!
I don’t know why switch vendors make POE++ switch ports that are NOT 2.5GbE.
I also don’t know why vendors make 2.5GbE switches that are NOT POE++ (or at least PoE+) either!
10GbE non-PoE ports I do understand the use case for some of those yes:
Uplink to router, downlink to another switch, link to a fast NAS or workstation that doesn’t have SFP module.
I’d buy a Mikrotik switch in a heartbeat that had:
4x port 1GbE with PoE+ (IP camera with PTZ)
4x port 2.5GbE with PoE++ for modern WAPs
2x SFP+
2x 10GbE, non-PoE
Rack mount, please and thanks!
@Sigh
QNAP has some switches that gets very close to checking all the boxes in a single device.
@ManWithNoName
Unfortunately pricing with the QNAP switches is still an issue. Compared to Mikrotik QNAP is a lot more expensive and quality-wise not better to justify that.
Interesting switch…I wonder if there are any laptops with wired ethernet that could be charged using the POE port. My currently laptop USB-c power brick is only 65w, so 90w is more than enough. I wonder if there isn’t such a thing? Or perhaps a breakout of POE/RJ45 to usb-c pd.
Most high-end WiFi 7 APs uses 10Gb PoE++, while the rest uses 2.5Gb PoE++.
Wifi 7 is still new, but it’s coming, and the switch options are very limited and expensive as well.