I have the AXT1800. It has an issue with heat. Ambient is 23 celcius, but the AXT1800 CPU hits 70 celcius, At this point, the DNS provided by Adguard home stops. I am still on the internet, and anything that does not require DNS works fine. Reboot fixes it, for a while.
It appears that I have completely eliminated this issue by adding a 40CM fan to the side of the AXT1800. Now it stays at about 40 celcius on the CPU, and I have not had the DNS outage-requiring-reboot issue.
I don't know if the fan in the AXT1800 ever spins up. I have not seen it above 0 RPM in the UI, but, I would have to time my observing the GUI a little better to notice it. Too late when it hits 70 celcius, as the entire admin GUI is not responding.
Putting the default fan speed at 90 makes for foo foo manufacturing process and preys on the ill informed. Diving into the linux portion of the router should be done anyway(com'n Openwrt would be the reason for "switching" from a main stream gui-based router), but default settings set from the factory creates a perception of deceptive business practice to run down hardware early for the comsumer to just get another router sooner to waste expenses.
You might need to check the forums about the life expectancy of running at 90C. Here a the link for the source of the reference and credit to Johnex for the graphs. Johnex.
That graph is about electrolytic capacitors and there is no correlation with CPU or SoC
Electrolytic capacitors, at high temperatures, can cause the electrolyte inside to vaporize and build up pressure, eventually exploding. The temperature is critical in this kind of component.
I have returned to the external Noctua fan. I will run that for the next 7 days. If it stops all of the DNS issues at high heat, then I will know it is the heat issue.
The heat definitely shortens the life of the product overall, but the argument is, where is the limit (temperature and duration). It is interesting that the DNS failed, sometimes several times per day, and simply adding the external fan made the DNS failure stop for two days. It looks like the device is not working correctly at above 70 celcius. I don't know why it is just the DNS feature and the Admin UI that stops responding, while internet access itself is fine.
The heat radiated by the atx1800 is a lot when the cpu is 70 celcius. It is quite hot to touch.
I have several Raspberry Pi servers, and the doco says they start throttling at 80 celcius. That indicates that the AXT1800 fan on at 70 is in the correct ballpark.
Will post here in a week if the external fan stopps all dns and admin gui freezing.
Another thought is manufacturing tollerances. Maybe my unit is not at 100% quality, and some internal hardware component is faulty at around the 70 degree mark?
All routers have problems with heat. It's often up to 33 degrees here and there's no air conditioning.
The Brume 2 always froze. I often put the Mudi in the fridge to get it working again (no kidding).
I cut open the housing on the Flint and screwed on a computer fan. This means that the router works reliably even when it's over 30 degrees outside. However, more humidity gets into the router and you can see rust spots.
In contrast, the laptop doesn't have any problems at high ambient temperatures.
They have, definitely, you just don't recognize them because Laptops work differently. If your Word document needs 200ms more to load it's just OK. But if a DNS reply needs 200ms more to get back ... you will know that there is something wrong.
I have several Raspberry Pi servers that run 24/7, one runs Pihole and recursive dns, and all are in a shed that hits over 100 Fahrenheit. I keep them cool in my home made cases with Noctua 40cm fans. We are by the sea, so salty air is being blown past it.
The secret is deoxit Gold G5. Give it a waah with isopropyl alcohol, and recoat with G5. Keeps it from oxidising.
High processing will result in heating.
If the router stops responding, it is likely due to high demand for processing, which creates a queue and causes a lag in response, and not because the device is hot.
If the temperature is the issue, the router will just power-off.
If you try to play Cyberpunk 2077 in your low spec computer, it will generate a lot of heating and the game will run very slow. Cooling it will not fix the root cause.
You need a higher spec computer to fix the problem.
I get what you are saying. But the real-world outcome is that the axt1800 works fine for some time, and then stops responding for dns and admin gui. At that time, i feel the top of the axt1800, and it is scorching hot. I unplug the power, and was using a handheld fan to blow air through it. It reboots, and works for a while until the cycle repeats. I then used bluetack to add a fan to the side of the axt1800, powered from the router itself. And all issues with it locking up stop. Note that when it locks up, the gui is not responsive, so i cannot tell how hard the cpu is working, nor can i see the cpu temperature. But, at least one time i did not use the fan to cool it during reboot, and it was 70 degrees inside once it restarted, and the cpu then was about 1%.
So, simply keeping the unit under 50 degrees at all time fixes the issue.
Maybe later, i will see if i can add a service to send the cpu temp and cpu workload via mqtt and then i could track that behaviour up til the failure point.
In the future i will factory reset the unit and then update it to the latest software update to see if that helps. At this point, it is required for work, and I am under pressure to release a project, so am happy the external fan fixes it so there is no issue.
I still find it interesting that the internet is still available, my remote session to the remote computer never cuts out. Only local dns stops, and the axt1800 admin gui is unresponsive. It is like those parts of the device crash, but the underlying connection remains fine.
Note also that for the times that i have been watching the cpu usage during normal work, cpu is only at about 1%. It only has 2 or 3 devices that use it fot internet access, and most of the work is done in the remote device, so the DNS workload should not be too high.