Silencing and servicing a noisy CCR1036

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In this tutorial i will explain how to create a silenced CCR1036 which will allow you to enjoy multi gigabit internet speeds in your home. I am not responsible if you destroy your router using this guide. The mikrotik CCR1036 is capable of wirespeed NAT without the need for hardware acceleration even with additional overheads like PPPOE or other processing like firewall or QoS that you may present. You will often find speed complaints from people who use this as an ISP as they have many customers often using PPPOE with many many QoS and firewall rules often automatically generated. As you may not know the CCR1036 offers one of the lowest NAT performance/$ compared to any other router even the ERL not to mention 2 SFP+ ports so you can be 10Gb/s internet ready.

This guide isnt meant for those who always use 50% or more of the CPU of the CCR1036 as the cooling isnt as good as stock but it is good enough even during summer but be warned that CPU can go up to 70C instead of 60C which stock cooling is capable off during summer.

Tools:
screwdrivers
screw pliers (like this)
some good non conductive thermal paste (I use Gelid GC-extreme)

Products:
2x scythe 20mm deep fans for 1U chassis (get the best silent fans that you can)
some tape

Step 1: Disassemble everything. Motherboard is held on really tight by screws that you will need the pliers to unscrew them. Heatsink is held on with backplate. The process is very much like an x86 motherboard. Take note of the screws and organise them, dont lose them.

You can see the CPU details. It is just like with x86 platforms. Note: Paste already cleaned out

Step 2: clean the heatsink and CPU of the old thermal paste. Make sure to clean the heatsink too of any dust.

While the critics will squirm you need to remember this is a big chip. Like with a GPU, put lots of goop, dont skimp on it. You must cover the entire surface.

Step 3: put the heatsink back on with the backplate. Connect the fans (note how i cabled them and which ones to attach to. Only 2 of the fan connectors are working and the other 2 dont work - you can blame mikrotik for not adding them in firmware).

Step 4 and 5: screw the CCR board back into the case. Make sure the cables of the fan are managed so that they will not get in the way of cooling and for putting back the tunnel later. After mounting the board and reconnecting everything, add the tunnel and tape.

You must make sure that everything is airtight with the tape. The CCR cant cool itself via open cooling, it requires fans with high CFMs and a tunnel that is as airtight as possible so that all the hot air escapes through one place.

And there you have it. I have been using this for a whole year and has been fine. Other than the PSU failing which is common, i suggest using a laptop PSU and a DC power jack and keeping the PSU outside the case for better cooling for both the CCR and PSU. The CCR1036 accepts 13V-30V but the recommended is to use a PSU rating of 24V 4A. I am using a PSU of 24V 5A which should fix the USB power instability (it couldnt reliably power a raspberry pi 2 from usb port). Make sure to set the fan in routerOS to manual and main.

 

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If you wish to replace the PSU, the cable with writing is positive. On the CCR board itself positive terminal is towards the front while negative is towards the back. Some additional photos:

Opening up the PSU included with the CCR. Some good practices in design but because of the huge flexibility of the board, whoever made this for mikrotik didnt put much in the design so this failed. Board was reporting 50C with this in. After changing the PSU and putting it out the board reported 40C instead. For a datacenter product the PSU lacked cooling so it failed. If you do add anything into the CCR(like DC Power jack) make sure you glue/attach it to the pad for the PSU so that the conductive terminals do not touch the chassis and short.

At the bottom of the picture is where the DC input for the board is. The lower terminal is positive while the above terminal is negative.

Thats it, i hope this helps you with your CCR. With these mods i made my CCR run much quieter than the ubiquiti edgerouter pro. I have both and i hate the ERPRO because of the inability of the software to work with the router itself (like trying to use snort), it is such an outdated platform and the CCR just has so much more to offer and is more power efficient for the performance. One person who managed to hack it using openwrt (it still runs routerOS), used it for media encoding.

 

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Good stuff with the exception of below:

That's about 10 times more thermal compound than you need, LOL... keep in mind also that some might have metallic components (Arctic Silver is a good example), and if so, ensure that it doesn't flow off the surface and on to adjacent components or traces...

In past experience, just enough to cover, and use a straight edge (old credit card words great for this) and level/plane it out so that the facing surface is just barely covered (e.g. no vias or empty spots) - also ensure that the mating side of the heatsink is clean and flat - I've seen more than a few that were not flat, so honing them down a bit on a flat surface with very fine grade sandpaper ensures a good mating surface...

(not sure about the CCR1036, but it looks like those fans do not have PWM connectors, but there looks like there might be two sets of headers there - PWM fans can report speed back to power/thermal management, and as such, they can be perhaps a bit more smart at keep the gear close to a constant temp).

 

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I did mention in tools to use non conductive thermal paste.

The fans i used had only 2 pins but the actual headers are 3 pins supporting PWM, I forgot to mention that if using 2 pin fans you have to set the fans to manual mode in routerOS.

I wouldnt use sandpaper on the heatsink. The heatsink cannot mount any tighter than it is designed to so there is a gap. That extra thermal paste helps.

 

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Hmmm... wondering if there is enough space for a 1U copper Heat Sink, let's say from a LGA775 socket...

What's the TDP rating on the Tilera at load?

 

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Hmmm... wondering if there is enough space for a 1U copper Heat Sink, let's say from a LGA775 socket...

What's the TDP rating on the Tilera at load?

70W-80W.

 

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Something like this...

 

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not sure how effective that would be. The heatsink has to be long enough for the fans to be effective. The mountings on the other hand will need to fit as well. I've tried one of those before when switching desktops to rackmounts and they were absolutely horrible when trying to put them in.

 

[paraplu]

Having a CCR1009 with sometimes loud fans; I managed to quiet it down by underclocking the 9 cores to 800mhz instead of the default 1200mhz. Saves a couple of watts as well.

 

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Having a CCR1009 with sometimes loud fans; I managed to quiet it down by underclocking the 9 cores to 800mhz instead of the default 1200mhz. Saves a couple of watts as well.

What about during summer? By using this mod on the CCR1009 you can use it at max performance with no noise. Unlike the CCR1036 the CCR1009 should use less than half the electricity so you can run dude server and utilise the full CPU. Besides by adding tape and using external PSU (if internal doesnt have fan) you will improve the cooling.

Changing thermal paste with a good one can also help.

edit: the CCR1036 and CCR1016 cannot quiet down even underclocked all the way because their idle power use is much higher so they reach the set temperature of 56C where the fans turn on even on idle. So replacing with silent fans makes a lot of difference for the higher end versions.

 

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What about during summer? By using this mod on the CCR1009 you can use it at max performance with no noise. Unlike the CCR1036 the CCR1009 should use less than half the electricity so you can run dude server and utilise the full CPU. Besides by adding tape and using external PSU (if internal doesnt have fan) you will improve the cooling.

Changing thermal paste with a good one can also help.

edit: the CCR1036 and CCR1016 cannot quiet down even underclocked all the way because their idle power use is much higher so they reach the set temperature of 56C where the fans turn on even on idle. So replacing with silent fans makes a lot of difference for the higher end versions.

Will consider hardware tweaking only after guarentee period has exceeded. And yes unfortenetely Tile has no proper speedstep technology which is a pity.

 

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Btw on this old forum they describe replacing the fans with noctua: http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=84475

 

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Btw on this old forum they describe replacing the fans with noctua: http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=84475

I've read that before. The problem with the CCR1036 is that it is made differently from that CCR1009. The CCR1036 uses a blower style and 30mm deep fans. The fans i use (and all quiet ones) are 20mm at best for the most amount of airflow. This means there is a 10mm gap between the tunnel and fans which causes the CCR1036 to overhead even if you underclock it as not enough air to cool the heatsink. Tape is needed to enclose the gap for maximum cooling performance. On the CCR1009 and the RB1100AHx2, the CPU doesnt require as much cooling s with the CCR1036, hence i made this guide for those using the CCR1036 at home or who at least want this router quieter.

Idle on a CCR1036 minimum is 35W if you are lucky. The minimum i see is on mine is 42W idle. On the CCR1036 being a bigger chip, temperature plays a big factor in power consumption. The hotter it is the more power it uses. if you plug in 2x Qlogic 300m multimode fibre optic SFP+ modules the idle pwoer consumption goes up to almost 50W. On CPU testing power consumption goes up to 60W (+10W if using SFP+ modules). Although the CCR1036 uses a lot more power it is capable of handling 10Gb/s internet (20Gb/s of NAT if it is 10Gb/s symmetrical).

 

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Let's be honest that a CCR1036 belongs in a data center, not in a home. But interesting thoughts. Thanks.

 

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Let's be honest that a CCR1036 belongs in a data center, not in a home. But interesting thoughts. Thanks.

Theres no reason why you cant have a cisco blade server cluster that is used in internet exchanges in your home even though your house only has megabits worth of internet and not terabits . You can even have a boing 747 at your house if it fits.

 

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Theres no reason why you cant have a cisco blade server cluster that is used in internet exchanges in your home even though your house only has megabits worth of internet and not terabits . You can even have a boing 747 at your house if it fits.

Yeah your are right. Consider me being jealous about your hardware ;-). Only if MT would allow external software on their Linux-based routerOS, we could build some classy server functions for multi core purpose.. unfortunately they don't allow. Big pity.

 

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Yeah your are right. Consider me being jealous about your hardware ;-). Only if MT would allow external software on their Linux-based routerOS, we could build some classy server functions for multi core purpose.. unfortunately they don't allow. Big pity.

You can hack the routerboard to make it possible. I plan to do it in the future after i've confirmed that i wont have to do it with every update. The process is simple, you just have to boot up openwrt via network, modify some stuff and you can than get the root shell to install and run linux software. One guy used it for media encoding.

 

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not sure how effective that would be. The heatsink has to be long enough for the fans to be effective. The mountings on the other hand will need to fit as well. I've tried one of those before when switching desktops to rackmounts and they were absolutely horrible when trying to put them in.

Might consider reading the following link... going all copper does have benefit...

https://www.servethehome.com/aftermarket-cooling-for-the-supermicro-x10sdv-xeon-d-motherboards/

 

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Might consider reading the following link... going all copper does have benefit...

https://www.servethehome.com/aftermarket-cooling-for-the-supermicro-x10sdv-xeon-d-motherboards/

I know it does but the problem is to be used in the CCR It has to fit the mounts and be rectangular in shape not square.

 

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Don't know if anyone's interested but I also did a fan swap in my CCR1036, in my case I used a couple of spare Noctua NF-A4x10 fans and 3D printed spacers - I also used a small fan speed controller on each fan - GELID GAMER system fan speed controller - these easily fit, inside, at the back of the case(use zip ties to tidy wires). I adjusted each fan speed with the controller until I was happy with how quiet the fans were, then I double checked system temps were acceptable after leaving the router to run for an hour. Obviously if you're hammering your router you can only reduce fan speeds so much, but if it is only dealing with a light load - as in my case - there is much more room to silence it.