Looking for cheap 10Gb networking in your home? Check out the MikroTik CRS309-1G-8S+IN 10 gigabit switch. ✅ CRS309 Noctua Fan Mod - Check Out The Temps! - th-cam.com/video/ZDTv6NGBhYk/w-d-xo.html ✅ CRS309-1G-8S+IN - mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in ✅ Test Results - mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in#fndtn-testresults ✅ MikroTik CRS310-1G-5S-4S+IN - mikrotik.com/product/crs310_1g_5s_4s_in In this video we'll be breaking down the specifications of the MikroTik CRS309 10 gigabit switch and router. The CRS309 is probably the most affordable 10Gb SFP+ switch and router on the market and is perfect for a homelab network. It uses an ARM 32bit CPU running at 800MHz with 512MB of RAM and 16MB of flash memory. The flash memory holds both MikroTik operating system SwitchOS and RouterOS at the same time, allowing you to switch back and fourth without having to flash the switch to make a change. The switch is passively cooled, so if using single mode or multimode fiber optic you'll never have any heat issues. The switch has eight SFP+ ports, but if using copper ethernet transceivers running at 10Gb speed you're limited to using only four ports due to the heat they generate. Check out my CRS309 Noctua Fan Mod video if you want to run more copper transceivers. MikroTik produces some of the most affordable home networking equipment on the market for small business or a home lab network. 👍SUBSCRIBE👍 to see more tech videos! → th-cam.com/channels/S7Q_pcIDNHefwBwuH7FhrQ.html 🔷FOLLOW MY SOCIALS🔷 Discord - discord.gg/QsPh5rPBcV Instagram - instagram.com/warning_56k/ TikTok - www.tiktok.com/@warning56k Twitter - twitter.com/Warning_56k Facebook - facebook.com/Warning56k 0:00 - Intro 0:53 - Key Specifications 2:00 - Ports 2:39 - Power 3:02 - Cooling System 3:20 - Internals 4:32 - RouterOS & SwitchOS 5:17 - 10Gb using Cat5e 6:31 - Throughput vs Bandwidth 7:20 - SFP+ RJ45 heat limitations 8:59 - DAC cables 9:49 - Single Mode vs Single Mode fiber 10:29 - 10Gb PCIe cards 12:04 - CRS310-1G-5S-4S+IN 13:04 - Outro
Very nice! Thank you for the kind words in this and your other comment! I can't wait to get my hands on a 14th Gen so I can dig into the lack of manual fan control on it and the late-build 13th Gens. It's driving me crazy wondering what's preventing user intervention.
cool thing about crs309 is that under routeros 6.41 and newer (but not 7.x) it supports hardware offloaded mpls, so you can build redundant network at home.
I don't know if I agree with just using multimode .. well, depending on the run. If you're going to do a long run in your house I would say just go ahead and run single mode fiber. Then you're already ready for 25G, 40G, and even 100G networking in the future whiteout having to re-run that stuff. 100G single mode short reach QSFP+ transceivers can be gotten off of ebay for ~$5-10, and the PCIE cards for the servers are only $100-200. The switches are also coming down in price really quickly but you're still looking at hundreds of dollars there, at least for the moment. Anyway, you can save future you some time and money to not rebuy/rerun by going single mode to start with on the long runs.
I'd never really say to "only" run multi mode, but for 99.9% of homelab users the bandwidth is excessively over the upper limit of what they would ever use. For example in this setup the drive speeds are the ultimate limit in bandwith. Even then for the transceivers the price difference gains quite a bit as you scale past 25G. Single mode fiber distance is much longer than that of multimode fiber cables at the data rate from 1G to 10G, but OM3/OM4/OM5 multimode fiber supports a higher data rate. Single-mode optical fiber often costs less than multimode fiber. When building a 1G fiber optic network that you want to be able to go to 10G or faster on eventually, the savings on the cost of fiber for single-mode saves about half-price. Sure, you could "future proof it" well past 1TB/s if you wanted, but that ups the cost of the switching equipment tremendously. That's even way beyond the capability of this switch by several orders of magnitude. By the time a home would need 40G fiber, the cables you would have already run would need to be replaced due to the coating cracking from age anyway lol. Joking, but you get my point. Remember, this is for folks making their first jump past 1Gb without architecting an entierly new infrastructure. Novices.
FYI: the fan pin may not be complete useless and you may still be able to use the 40mm fan. I brought MikroTik CSS326-24G-2S+ a few years back for $100 , and while it's not 10G switch, it does have two SFP+ port that I can use as an uplink to other switch. Completely fine for home use. When I got the switch I did look the youtube about adding the fan and notice that the 2 headless pins (in my switch) is actually directly got the power from the DC and I assume it's directly related to the power from the barrel jack. And from MikroTik website, the switch (including your) can use 12V DC adapter to power this unit. Which means if you use 12V DC to power the switch, I suspect your 4 headless pins may have 12v, which is enough to use the 20mm fan. I did this mod on my switch and it's running min the mid 30c all the time. I have installed the Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX and it is very quiet. Two years w/o problem.
Good info! With the unit plugged into either power source, I had previously tested the fan header points on the board with a multimeter and there was no voltage. It appears to be missing the voltage regulator that steps the input voltage down to 12. I have another video where I installed an array of four Noctua NF-A4x10 5V fans on top of the SFP+ ports, primarily for the SFP+ ports themselves. With no fan for the CPU stays around 32C, so not really needed there.
Nice video!! Be aware that in RouterOS there is a feature called L3 HW offload that allows you do interVLAN routing almost a wired speed avoiding taxing the CPU!
@@Warning56kb My pleasure. I use this functionality for Layer 3 for inter-VLAN routing between different VLANs but not as Internet router. Even you get the functionality you will be taxed in the CPU. This device is a switch and to get a full router I will use another Mikrotik RB like the RB5009 or any other RB series that are specialized for that. So you use this switch to manage VLANs downstream and you have an uplink to your new RB for internet egress. The communication between the CRS and the RB is like a L3 to L3 point to point connection
I love this model and run two with MLAG in my home lab. All my links are DAC from QSPTEK with x520 on the other end. I'm not using the PoE-in as found you can't flip flop between power sources repeatedly in some power up scenarios. RouterOS is a funny animal for sure and wish it wouldn't accept unsupported commands.
Great vid... just one thing; I've Windows 11 Pro installed with a 10G Mellanox ConnectX-3 Ethernet Adaptor and I can see Sent/Received. I am connected to a US-16-XG Ubiquiti Switch. Windows 11 Pro install from ISO I rebuilt last weekend. Had to use the original onboard NIC to get Win 11 up and running but once connect to the net it found the driver and installed.
Interesting. I'm wondering now if its only tied to the ConnectX-2. What's odd is for me Windows 11 Pro (22H2) recognised the driver for the ConnectX-2 without needing prior internet connection.
They're a very good jump from 1Gb speeds. In my opinion I would look at the scale (1gb, 2.5, 5, 10) as a scale of diminishing returns in cost, complexity and practicality. Going from 1Gb to 2.5 is going to be your biggest bang for buck. Many new performamce motherboards have built in 2.5Gb already. Decent, new 2.5Gb network cards can be dirt cheap at ~$20. It's not hard for most eth cables to reach that speed vs 10Gb, as well as the 300MB/s (2.5Gb) speed being the new standard rate for most consumer PC and laptop SSDs, it's hard to ignore the massive jump to be realistically gained. Add in the super low cost of 2.5Gb switches, and it's impossible to ignore. With 5Gb being the next realistic step. I look at 10Gb as being a lesser use case reserved for homelabs with larger drive arrays who move massive amounts of data. Plex media and large video editing uses being the main examples. The large 10Gb transfers realistically happing much less often than on the 2.5Gb side of things. Thankfully the vast majority of 10Gb transceivers and switches support negotiating down to 2.5 and 5Gb speeds.
How would you compare this to the Unifi USW-Aggregation? It looks like they're about the same price right now (both being compared as L2 switches of course)
Looking for cheap 10Gb networking in your home? Check out the MikroTik CRS309-1G-8S+IN 10 gigabit switch.
✅ CRS309 Noctua Fan Mod - Check Out The Temps! - th-cam.com/video/ZDTv6NGBhYk/w-d-xo.html
✅ CRS309-1G-8S+IN - mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in
✅ Test Results - mikrotik.com/product/crs309_1g_8s_in#fndtn-testresults
✅ MikroTik CRS310-1G-5S-4S+IN - mikrotik.com/product/crs310_1g_5s_4s_in
In this video we'll be breaking down the specifications of the MikroTik CRS309 10 gigabit switch and router. The CRS309 is probably the most affordable 10Gb SFP+ switch and router on the market and is perfect for a homelab network. It uses an ARM 32bit CPU running at 800MHz with 512MB of RAM and 16MB of flash memory. The flash memory holds both MikroTik operating system SwitchOS and RouterOS at the same time, allowing you to switch back and fourth without having to flash the switch to make a change. The switch is passively cooled, so if using single mode or multimode fiber optic you'll never have any heat issues. The switch has eight SFP+ ports, but if using copper ethernet transceivers running at 10Gb speed you're limited to using only four ports due to the heat they generate. Check out my CRS309 Noctua Fan Mod video if you want to run more copper transceivers.
MikroTik produces some of the most affordable home networking equipment on the market for small business or a home lab network.
👍SUBSCRIBE👍 to see more tech videos! → th-cam.com/channels/S7Q_pcIDNHefwBwuH7FhrQ.html
🔷FOLLOW MY SOCIALS🔷
Discord - discord.gg/QsPh5rPBcV
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Facebook - facebook.com/Warning56k
0:00 - Intro
0:53 - Key Specifications
2:00 - Ports
2:39 - Power
3:02 - Cooling System
3:20 - Internals
4:32 - RouterOS & SwitchOS
5:17 - 10Gb using Cat5e
6:31 - Throughput vs Bandwidth
7:20 - SFP+ RJ45 heat limitations
8:59 - DAC cables
9:49 - Single Mode vs Single Mode fiber
10:29 - 10Gb PCIe cards
12:04 - CRS310-1G-5S-4S+IN
13:04 - Outro
I recently added one of these to my vSphere Dell R630 rack. Quiet, and fast. Great video, thank you.
Very nice! Thank you for the kind words in this and your other comment! I can't wait to get my hands on a 14th Gen so I can dig into the lack of manual fan control on it and the late-build 13th Gens. It's driving me crazy wondering what's preventing user intervention.
One of the best switches for the home lab ! Stable simple & affordable !
cool thing about crs309 is that under routeros 6.41 and newer (but not 7.x) it supports hardware offloaded mpls, so you can build redundant network at home.
I don't know if I agree with just using multimode .. well, depending on the run. If you're going to do a long run in your house I would say just go ahead and run single mode fiber. Then you're already ready for 25G, 40G, and even 100G networking in the future whiteout having to re-run that stuff. 100G single mode short reach QSFP+ transceivers can be gotten off of ebay for ~$5-10, and the PCIE cards for the servers are only $100-200. The switches are also coming down in price really quickly but you're still looking at hundreds of dollars there, at least for the moment. Anyway, you can save future you some time and money to not rebuy/rerun by going single mode to start with on the long runs.
I'd never really say to "only" run multi mode, but for 99.9% of homelab users the bandwidth is excessively over the upper limit of what they would ever use. For example in this setup the drive speeds are the ultimate limit in bandwith. Even then for the transceivers the price difference gains quite a bit as you scale past 25G. Single mode fiber distance is much longer than that of multimode fiber cables at the data rate from 1G to 10G, but OM3/OM4/OM5 multimode fiber supports a higher data rate. Single-mode optical fiber often costs less than multimode fiber. When building a 1G fiber optic network that you want to be able to go to 10G or faster on eventually, the savings on the cost of fiber for single-mode saves about half-price.
Sure, you could "future proof it" well past 1TB/s if you wanted, but that ups the cost of the switching equipment tremendously. That's even way beyond the capability of this switch by several orders of magnitude. By the time a home would need 40G fiber, the cables you would have already run would need to be replaced due to the coating cracking from age anyway lol. Joking, but you get my point.
Remember, this is for folks making their first jump past 1Gb without architecting an entierly new infrastructure. Novices.
FYI: the fan pin may not be complete useless and you may still be able to use the 40mm fan. I brought MikroTik CSS326-24G-2S+ a few years back for $100 , and while it's not 10G switch, it does have two SFP+ port that I can use as an uplink to other switch. Completely fine for home use. When I got the switch I did look the youtube about adding the fan and notice that the 2 headless pins (in my switch) is actually directly got the power from the DC and I assume it's directly related to the power from the barrel jack. And from MikroTik website, the switch (including your) can use 12V DC adapter to power this unit. Which means if you use 12V DC to power the switch, I suspect your 4 headless pins may have 12v, which is enough to use the 20mm fan. I did this mod on my switch and it's running min the mid 30c all the time. I have installed the Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX and it is very quiet. Two years w/o problem.
Good info! With the unit plugged into either power source, I had previously tested the fan header points on the board with a multimeter and there was no voltage. It appears to be missing the voltage regulator that steps the input voltage down to 12. I have another video where I installed an array of four Noctua NF-A4x10 5V fans on top of the SFP+ ports, primarily for the SFP+ ports themselves. With no fan for the CPU stays around 32C, so not really needed there.
This has to be one of if not the best review I've seen on this switch. When it comes to 10 gig I prefer fiber or dac cables its just more efficient.
Thank you for the kind words!
Lower power and the SFP+ modules generate only a fraction of the heat.
Nice video!! Be aware that in RouterOS there is a feature called L3 HW offload that allows you do interVLAN routing almost a wired speed avoiding taxing the CPU!
Nice! Thank you for that! I wasn't even aware. Maybe i can switch back to router use!
@@Warning56kb My pleasure. I use this functionality for Layer 3 for inter-VLAN routing between different VLANs but not as Internet router. Even you get the functionality you will be taxed in the CPU. This device is a switch and to get a full router I will use another Mikrotik RB like the RB5009 or any other RB series that are specialized for that. So you use this switch to manage VLANs downstream and you have an uplink to your new RB for internet egress. The communication between the CRS and the RB is like a L3 to L3 point to point connection
I love this model and run two with MLAG in my home lab. All my links are DAC from QSPTEK with x520 on the other end. I'm not using the PoE-in as found you can't flip flop between power sources repeatedly in some power up scenarios. RouterOS is a funny animal for sure and wish it wouldn't accept unsupported commands.
0:05 yes!!!
Great vid... just one thing; I've Windows 11 Pro installed with a 10G Mellanox ConnectX-3 Ethernet Adaptor and I can see Sent/Received. I am connected to a US-16-XG Ubiquiti Switch. Windows 11 Pro install from ISO I rebuilt last weekend. Had to use the original onboard NIC to get Win 11 up and running but once connect to the net it found the driver and installed.
Interesting. I'm wondering now if its only tied to the ConnectX-2. What's odd is for me Windows 11 Pro (22H2) recognised the driver for the ConnectX-2 without needing prior internet connection.
How about 2.5g and 5g switches? Some desktops have them built in now?
They're a very good jump from 1Gb speeds. In my opinion I would look at the scale (1gb, 2.5, 5, 10) as a scale of diminishing returns in cost, complexity and practicality. Going from 1Gb to 2.5 is going to be your biggest bang for buck. Many new performamce motherboards have built in 2.5Gb already. Decent, new 2.5Gb network cards can be dirt cheap at ~$20. It's not hard for most eth cables to reach that speed vs 10Gb, as well as the 300MB/s (2.5Gb) speed being the new standard rate for most consumer PC and laptop SSDs, it's hard to ignore the massive jump to be realistically gained. Add in the super low cost of 2.5Gb switches, and it's impossible to ignore. With 5Gb being the next realistic step. I look at 10Gb as being a lesser use case reserved for homelabs with larger drive arrays who move massive amounts of data. Plex media and large video editing uses being the main examples. The large 10Gb transfers realistically happing much less often than on the 2.5Gb side of things. Thankfully the vast majority of 10Gb transceivers and switches support negotiating down to 2.5 and 5Gb speeds.
How would you compare this to the Unifi USW-Aggregation? It looks like they're about the same price right now (both being compared as L2 switches of course)
They're very similar. If this is your first time getting your feet wet wit networking, i'd lean towards the Unifi system
very informative. keep it up. 😍
Gunner River