Ubiquiti EdgeSwtich 24-lite - Stay away.

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EluRex

Active Member
Apr 28, 2015
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Los Angeles, CA
This Aug I bought two Ubiquiti EdgeSwtich 24-lite for DC usage, it made a living hell for me due to it does not have any fan at all. Its idle temperature went to unbelievable 70c/158f.
edgeswitch1.jpg
I am extremely upset and without any 5v/12v output in the switch, it makes adding fan into the switch very difficult. The switches need to be deployed into the DC within 24 hours, so overclocker/watercooling part of me take over. The switch over 120V AC to 25v DC, so I soldered a 22up capacitor , put two 12v fan in serial.

I have two designs for the mod. 1st one without the wind tunnel
edgeswitch3.jpg

2nd design with wind tunnel
edgeswitch2.jpg

now, burning time, and yes the middle one is my SM C2758 use for pfsense
edgeswitch5.jpg

Left with wind tunnel drop from 70c -> 52c , the right without wind tunnel drop from 70c -> 66c basically is useless
edgeswitch4.jpg

So design #2 wins and I am happy that I was able to fix this design disaster within 24 hrs. My advice is to stay away from it.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
7,625
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You could always use a longer fan with more "turbine" sound... err power :D ;)
 
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Lost-Benji

Member
Jan 21, 2013
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The arse end of the planet
Not happy at all with idea of just a cap to limit the fans, dangerous as hell.
Smart man would have pulled a DC rail from the switches mainboard or installed a small AC-DC PSU inside.

P.S The Ubiquiti PSU seen there is shit, WTF cheap shit is that?
 
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cactus

Moderator
Jan 25, 2011
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@Lost-Benji That PSU is just a skinned wall wart. Any regulation that matters is happening on the main board. 2x 10GbE SFP+ and 24GbE for ~$200 seems not so bad.
@EluRex Was the switch locking up or do you just not like 70C cpu temp? What were load temps in stock form?
 

Lost-Benji

Member
Jan 21, 2013
424
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The arse end of the planet
@Lost-Benji That PSU is just a skinned wall wart. Any regulation that matters is happening on the main board. 2x 10GbE SFP+ and 24GbE for ~$200 seems not so bad.
I will say it again, what you have done is dangerous and foolish.

Feed the DC from the "Skinned" wart and run fans from it or use another PSU.
DON'T feed small DC fans with any mains potential regardless of caps in series.
 

Aluminum

Active Member
Sep 7, 2012
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so this is purely a matter of not liking the temperature?
This, were there actually problems with the switch in operation? Some chips run hot due to their design (particularly older process nodes) and 70C is nothing compared to many others.

The X58 chipset on many boards often runs at 90C+ so the overclocking crowd hates it and usually goes out of their way to cool it off, but despite this plenty of 1366 servers are still chugging along just fine after 6+ years.
 

cactus

Moderator
Jan 25, 2011
830
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CA
Running cooler wont hurt, but if they weren't locking up, there is no need to go adding cooling to these. 70C is considered high for something like a CPU, but is not astronomical for ASIC temps. Thanks for opening them up and showing us what is inside though.

@Lost-Benji I think he is just pulling from the DC side of the internal psu, so I dont see anything wrong with where he is getting the power. Running them in series is a little wonky to me though. These switches can be run off an external 16-25V DC psu, so it follows that is what UBNTs internal psu is putting out.
 

Lost-Benji

Member
Jan 21, 2013
424
23
18
The arse end of the planet
@Lost-Benji I think he is just pulling from the DC side of the internal psu, so I dont see anything wrong with where he is getting the power. Running them in series is a little wonky to me though. These switches can be run off an external 16-25V DC psu, so it follows that is what UBNTs internal psu is putting out.
Read the OP please.
The switch over 120V AC to 25v DC, so I soldered a 22up capacitor , put two 12v fan in serial.
2x fans + Cap in series on the 120VAC side.
 

mstone

Active Member
Mar 11, 2015
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Read the OP please.
2x fans + Cap in series on the 120VAC side.
I would kinda have assumed 2 12V fans in series on the 25V side, dropping each by ~12V, with a cap to smooth out the current. 2 12VDC fans wired into a 120V circuit, I don't think would work as well.