MikroTikCRS310-8G+2S+in

I'm really enjoying these devices. It's my first taste of Mikrotik and after getting the first one of these I came back and bought a second one. Great for getting 10gb to my homelab as well as letting me make better use of the 2 runs from my basement to second story to get 5gb with a bonded pair. RouterOS is a bit of a head scratcher at first but there is a lot of good content online as well as in their documentation. So far after using one switch for a month and adding in a second one this week I would say these are a good value to add speed to your network.

This has been solid for me since it's been deployed in my home network. I have a few other Mikrotik devices. I will continue to buy Mikrotik from this point forward as long as there are no issues.

First off, many reviews comment about the fan noise. And yes with the stock fan it is noisy. I bought a Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM, Premium Quiet Fan, 4-Pin (40x20mm, Brown) from here as a replacement. It was a plug and play replacement for the old fan. After that it is nearly silent. I don't hear it at all in operation because my PCs make more noise.This really is a great switch. I only use it as a switch and don't try to use it as a router. I use it with VLANs, which can be confusing to setup if coming from most consumer grade networking gear. I got it working but it took multiple hours to get it setup. And I say this as someone who has worked with computer and networking equipment for decades and my job is to write software.But still it was fun to get it figured out and working. Once it is working you can just set it and forget it.

The switch works great. All the features you'd expect from SwOS and RouterOS and it's a 2.5g switch. However, there are two very important things to keep in mind. The 20mm PWM fan is VERY loud. If you have it anywhere near you, I'd highly recommend swapping it for a Noctua NF-A20. It takes 5 total screws to remove it, just use the rubber inserts instead of the screws to install. The second thing is that the fan will only operate in PWM when RouterOS is booted. Fan will run at 100% in SwOS. I can only recommend SwOS on this switch when you put it far away from you or with a low noise adapter.

This switch has a pretty steep learning curve but will reward your time and effort. It can do wire speed L3 once configured and even some limited local routing. It’s not a router though, more of a small aggregation switch. I use it to attach my 2.5gbps devices to a 10gb backbone that goes into a router/firewall setup. It is loud with stock fan in swOS but routerOS is much quieter. I replaced the fan with a noctua and now it’s virtually silent. This is a perfect router for people who are looking to step up their homelab setup from a basic one or two switch setup to something slightly faster/larger. I think it’s important to set an expectation for the capability of the device beyond a homelab setup as it is complex to configure and will require time to learn, some customers looking for a plug and play solution will want to look elsewhere.TLDR: GOATed device for small/medium homelab and people who like to learn/tinker. Crazy feature set for the price. Not as plug and play as other options.

I have two other. Mikrotik switches that are fine. This is a brick after about one week and attempting to run SWos. Winbox, netinstall, serial all failing. Can't get a single port to light up. Not alone in this I've learned.Don't see myself going any further into the Mikrotik ecosystem after this. What a dud. Mikrotik UI is trash for me.

These are nice switches, and are working very well for me. 10G fiber and 2.5G copper without breaking the bank. The RouterOS on them is quite full featured for such a device as well, with several options for how you want to manage it. I like being able to manage it over a webui, but also being able to manage and monitor it via a full featured ssh environment. They handle everything from 10G fiber down to 10Mbit half duplex with no fuss. The LEDs on these things are BRIGHT! The single fan can get loud, but under normal operation is tends to stay throttled down pretty well.

This switch is absolutely phenomenal. It takes a bit of effort to get the switch properly booting into SwOS instead of RouterOS, but it works out of the box, with 10gig sfp+ working flawlessly too.The switch is *noisy*. The cooling fan, especially while under sfp+ load + fully loaded ports is louder than my full 48 port switch, and is also the loudest device on my rack. If the noise isn't a dealbreaker for you, this switch is awesome.