Has anyone done any mods to make a MicroTik CRS-312 more quiet?

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solon

Member
Apr 1, 2021
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Hey all,
I'm considering ubgrading to 10Gbe at home. The CRS-312 seems to be the only option that is reasonably priced and has the ports I'd want. The reports on the noise it (sometimes) makes make me apprehensive though.

I read somewhere someone put in noctua fans, but that they weren't always enough?

The 1U height limit isn't all that important to me so I was considering cutting two 200mm holes in the top (over the heatsink and PSU's) and attaching 200mm fans (probably noctua) while removing the four rear fans. Has anyone tried anything like that?

Does anyone have any thoughts whether there's anything likely in the way that would stop me doing something like this?

Alternatively I have a big room-wide watercooling loop that I could add it into, but the images of the interior don't really indicate obvious places for waterblocks both by the heatpipes and certainly at the psu's.

My other option would be installing three or four dual 10Gbe NICs in my home server and just switching that way. I'm not an expert on networking by any means but I understand there are some parallel/serial networking considerations that would make this less desirable?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.