I have noticed that my 6416A can be pretty hot when working for couple of hours, so I thought that maybe adding some heatsink on top of the integrated circuits inside, and perhaps drilling few more holes in the casing - can be a good idea?
My idea is to use Thermal Conductive Heatsink Plaster to attach some aluminum heatsinks to the integrated circuits inside - howver, even aluminum is not ferrous metal - I am afraid would that have negative impact on the routers WiFi? Or might have?
It maybe hot, but not too much. But yes you can connect a heatsink as you suggested. It should works pretty well. Just don’t short circuit anything.
I find the AR9311 SoC’s run very cool compared to MT7620 SoC’s
These chips use the PCB’s copper as heatsink. An additional heatsink on top can work but you also need enough air around any heatsink to be able to dissipate all the heat. Once all the air around it raises 1 degree then the heatsink itself needs more air to get rid of the heat so it might eventually make not much difference.
How hard does your router work?
When you say hot, how hot is that? 50C? 75C?
At 50C that is cool enough.
I have tested them all.MT7620A is more hotter than others,MT7620N is a little more than AR9331.
I haven’t measured how hot it is (do not have appropriate instrument) - but when touching the case it is unpleasant feeling that it is too warm for such device. So my idea was to add some ALU heatsink and drill some ventilation holes in the case - I guess this will not hurt the operation of the router.