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Forum Discussion
RAX120 Fan Settings
I am trying to prevent the fan from spinning up too often and I found out about the following settings page:
http://routerlogin.net/Thermal_FAN.htm
but applying any of the settings leads to a 400 Bad Request. It would be nice if this actually worked.
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I have yet to hear the fan.
Having this issue aswell.
- I have RAX80 the only way I would hear my fan is when I unplug the router and plug it back in when I want to reset the router. But also I have raised the router on applied “feet” to raise it off the flat surface that way there is some air ventilation between the router and my desk. The RAX80 was getting very hot while sitting on flat surface but yet the fan didn’t kick on so I raised it, router stays cool but like I said earlier I have yet to hear the fan only on reboot.
I stumbled upon your post because my router RAX120 has been running hot and the 5GHz keeps going out. I found some info somebody else posted about their system getting hot. Try "ip address/debug.htm". I found a setting that says " Always enable Fan". I checked it and hit apply and it looks like the setting stayed. I just checked the fan and holy crap, it's on! HOT air is coming out and I hope this fixes the performance issues. I have a feeling the 5GHz radio was turning off due to overheating.
Wow! Thank you so much!
This is also working for me. never before had the fan come on but it is now. I'd rather it run at all times and fail eventually than let this over priced router sit hot and slowdown.
thanks again for responding
You are very welcome! I agree 100%. I want all my equipment to run as cool as possible.
- I have RAX80 and when I go into that setting I do not see always enable fan. Perhaps it’s only rax120 setting??? Can anyone confirm?
I'm sorry but I do not have access to an RAX80. I did try the debug.htm on my netgear switch and received an Access Error. Here is a screen shot from the debug.htm on my RAX120. I updated to the latest Hot Fix firmware, V1.0.1.118, and the fan was unselected when I checked it this morning.
Thanks a bunch! Bookmarked! It appears the fan will go back to default the next time you unplug, turn off/on or reboot the router.
I'd also would want the fan to run 24/7 than 5g slow down.
You're welcome! Yes, I did notice that as well. I have the RAX120 striclty as a router now and use a DHCP server along with AX6000 as my wireless APs. This way, I rarely have to restart the RAX120 and can keep the fan going. Because it was getting so hot, I bought some mini fans that hook up to the USB. They are loud but I have my RAX120 in the basement / Utility Room will all of my other equipment so I never hear it and it's been running great!
Looking through my setting trying to figure out where the enable/disable setting is for my router because my cooling fan never comes on and from reading other posts, it looks like there might be an option to enable/disable, I just can't seem to find it.
if you goto
http://192.168.1.1/debug.htm
it will have an option to always enable fan, however, it will go to default if the router is turned off/restarted.Don't have any access to fan controld on the RX200 either, really wish Netgear would make all these hidden pages part of the advanced settings for a start, what's the point in hiding them?
For such expensive routers it would be nice to have a UI with a lot more options and visibilty of what the router is doing, would be nice to see the CPU temps or overide the fan speeds if we wish at least.
So many things they could add, even the advanced settings in these routers are ultra basic. Why can't I see the link speed of atttached devices either?, as you can from the iOS app, how much bandwidth is each device using?, guess we'll never know.
If you capture debug logs, some of the log entries will include polling from the various thermal sensors depending on the router model. Usually the fan should come on if any of those sensors report a temperature that is too high.
Wanted to also add that the cooling design of the RAX120 has a heat spreader on the bottom of the unit, and a large finned heatsink on the top side of the board.
When the cooling fan is active, it pulls in air through the bottom vents, across the heat spreader, then through the heatsink, and out of the unit via the exhaust fan.
If the bottom has the proper amount of space, then you will get some level of convection similarly to how a radiator works where the heat generated will induce a small amount of airflow throguh the unit, and if a temperature sensor reads too high, the fan should come on to force more airflow through.
The top of the unit will have the SOC, RAM, NAND, and various RF backend hardware, and make direct contact to the large heatsink. The bottom that has the heat spreader, alrgely contains components such as RF front end components like amplifiers.
The fan should not need to run all of the time since the vast majority of the time, the SOC will be largely idle.
- Yeah exactly hence why I raised the router of the flush surface so the bottom of the router has about an inch or inch and a half of space between the router and a surface. The router stays warm but not hot like it was when I first installed it. The WiFi doesn’t drop. I don’t have the fan running at all. I highly recommend to raise the router off the flat surface about an inch or inch and half.
