BEST Low Power 25GbE and 100GbE Switch MikroTik CRS510-8XS-2XQ-IN

We review the MikroTik CRS510-8XS-2XQ-IN, an 8-port 25GbE and 2-port 100GbE switch. While it may not be the cheapest 100GbE switch out there, this switch has a lot going for it. If you have an office or a homelab and need a cheap and easy-to-use switch, this might just be the best out there.

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Timestamps
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00:00 Introduction
01:17 Hardware Overview
05:31 Price
08:04 Performance
09:44 Power and Management
15:28 Key Lessons Learned
17:18 Wrap-up

[Entity]

Patrick, by now, I think the entire milky-way galaxy knows you like to have a key lessons learned segment. Keep up the great work. It really simplifies the life of the average IT guy.

[christiano.]

I got one shortly after it came out and I'm extremely happy with it. I was looking for an upgrade from 10G to something faster and the choices were pretty crappy until this popped up in my search results. I'm using it as a desktop switch to connect everything at or near my desk. At the moment, it provides various 40G, 25G, 10G and 1G connections for my workstation, several NAS systems, home office and internet access. It's much more convenient to use the CRS510 rather then the CRS504 for this use case. The slow connections are a bit of a waste of a SFP28 port, but being able to have everything handled by one switch and not needing a second switch was a win in my book.
I've removed the stock fans and the top cover and replaced it with a 3D printed hood in which I've mounted a 120mm Noctua fan that pulls out air directly from the power supply, the switch chip and the SFP cages. The switch is totally fine with the removal of the fans, the fan headers are standard 3-pin and it also doesn't bother that I've just connected one fan at the moment. Before I had the 40G optics in, it temperature controlled the fan and it was mostly off. After the 40G optics went it, the Noctua fan is now on all the time, but you can't hear it, it's basically as quiet as a passive switch.

[alc]

I just bought six of these to use as storage switches. They're cheap, quick, and they support MLAG so it made them great for the use case with our low server density.

[hephestosthalays]

Would work great for moving ISOs around my homelab

[mr_jarble]

I am now on my second mikrotik switch in my home lab thanks to your videos ❤

[JasonsLabVideos]

I want to say thank you for all the hard work you do and all the videos !! YOU GUYS ROCK !! Good work Patrick & Crew !

[rudypieplenbosch]

I have this switch, it works great with various modules, much more options in the settings than your usual managed switch.

[stephanszarafinski]

Thanks for the awesome review 😊 I’ve got a 510 and 504 in a throughput testlan setup, very happy with them. The 510 is on my desk, replaced the fans with noctua’s to make it less noisy.

[sinry]

Patrick, I love your content, but please start at least mentioning L3HW offloading on these switches. Many times it's been mentioned that CPU routing on these things leaves nearly everything to be desired. However most of the CRS lineup will also L3 route, wire speed, with no CPU impact with some limitations of course. We use a lot of these switches to build internal BGP fabrics with L3HW offloading enabled, and performance is fantastic in that regard. Yes, what is offloadable does vary a bit switch to switch, but also saying that these things can't route due to CPU performance is also a bit misleading.

[BillLambert]

I did the breakout cables on the CRS504 instead. Very happy with it so far, and it gave me a very easy transition from 40GbE.

[benjaminsmith]

Yep, it's cool how cheap 10/25/100G is for the homelab, while at work getting 1/10GbaseT switches is annoyingly more expensive than 1G. 🙃

[bulzaiguard]

we need more companies that make things like this

[cal]

used to work for an isp that only did mikrotik. they were always way cheaper and better than the competition if you didnt need the support contracts.

[misku_]

Thanks for the review. Looking forward to 10GbE switches reviews 👍

[mohammedgoder]

Would be great if they released a 16 x QSFP28 port model.

[FunkyKong]

I just bought one of these the other day after watching your CRS504 review. I think another thing to note is that the Mikrotik switches not only support the standards-compliant backward compatibility with SFP+, but they actually support SFP too. It really simplifies your cabling situation if you're going to have to use breakouts on the 504.

Watching some other reviewers they have a similar homelab setup to me: 1 workstation, 1 fast storage array somewhere else, and then you need to uplink this thing to your core switch (or make it your core switch). So they end up using SFP+ to join their L2 at 10G but the QSFP28 is purely just to get two hosts talking from across the house/workspace.

On a totally separate technical note, having watched a few of your recent reviews, I hear this weird flanger effect in the highs in your audio, particularly with speech. I'm listening on Adam A7X studio monitors and hear it also in my HD599's. I don't know if it's a de-esser acting up, phase issues between mics (maybe you have a lav + room mic out of phase?), or some kind of AI noise reducer? I hear this in other videos sometimes and imagine I'm crazy but I sent it to an audio engineer friend just now who says he hears it too.

[DavidTrejo]

ALMOST…. went with this but ended up going with the crs504 4x100gb switch.

It was super cheap and lets me upgrade from SFP28 via breakout cables to full qsfp28 in the future.

The only negative was the cost of the breakout cables 😅😞

Btw I highly recommend a noctua fan swap (at least with the crs504) if you are going to keep it nearby. The fan drone was annoying 😑 but some 3-pin noctuas fixed that in a jiffy 😌

[ibrarmahammad]

Thank you for Showing Amazing Devices which are Beyond from our hands. Please Show Business firewalls with 8+ ports and Open source Networking devices.

[jossushardware]

The reason why I have to select this router instead of the other 4x100GB is that to my rack I get only 10GB uplink, how could I insert it to the 4x100GB switch? So this is my choise MikroTik CRS510-8XS-2XQ-IN

[Digisan]

Excellent video, as always! Also had to laugh how deliberately you pronounced nicgiga. That is one brand name you DON'T want to mispronounce 😅