That being said, I carefully detached the top cover – I had to do it more gently than with other routers because the plastic was less flexible – then I was able to see two interesting-looking heat sinks. Do be careful because you are going to encounter a warranty seal which suggests that Asus doesn’t want you to open the case (doing so may void the warranty). Since I needed to check out the internal hardware of the Asus RT-AX53U, I removed the two screws hidden underneath the two silicone covers (the other two feet are there for design purposes only). Internal Hardware (Asus RT-AX53U Teardown) Returning at the top of the Asus RT-AX53U, you do get the full suite of LEDs (I am surprised they didn’t put a single LED here.) and, from the left, there’s the Power LED followed by the three LEDs for the LAN ports.įurther to the right, there’s the WAN LED, two LEDs for the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz radio bands and the last LED shows the status of the USB port. If you need more cabled connection, you will need to use a network switch and at that point, it’s better to just go with a more expensive router. Listen, WiFi is great and all, especially the WiFi 6, but you can’t yet beat a cabled connection, so I am definitely not a fan of removing LAN ports. What happened, where did the fourth LAN port go? It got annihilated by the budget cuts. And next to it, there’s the WAN port (Gigabit) and three Gigabit LAN ports. Then we get a USB 2.0 port which is there for printers since you’re not going to like the storage performance that it can deliver (are USB 3.0 that much expensive?). You’re going to find all the ports and connectors on the rear side of the router and, from the left, there’s the Reset button, followed by Power button and the Power port. Speaking of cables, let’s check the ports area. But, be aware that only two have silicone covers, so, when adding lots of cables, the router can move around more freely than other heavier routers (which is not a good thing). This seems to have changed with the RT-AX53U because I could see two mounting holes on the bottom panel, right next to the four feet. One of the main complaints that I had for the design of the RT-AX55 was that it couldn’t be mounted on a wall. Asus RT-AX53U – Thermal photo captured with AGM Glory Pro Obviously, I did use a thermal camera (AGM Glory Pro) to check the actual temperature and, as you can see, there are some heated points, but there is no overheating. It’s true that despite being small, the internal components are not crammed together and there is enough space for a proper airflow. The case is rectangular and made of plastic covered by a black matte finish, and there are lots of ventilation holes at the top, bottom, sides and rear section which should ensure a good heat management. But then again, very few people actually upgrade the antennas and even less see an actual benefit because there is a limit to how high you can go for consumer-based networking devices. And it does have four antennas, two on the rear and two on the sides these antennas are not removable which is expected in this price range. The Asus RT-AX53U is perhaps the most compact AX1800 router that I tested so far, measuring only 7.5 x 5.0 x 1.7 inches (19.0 x 12.6 x 4.4 cm) which is less than the RT-AX55.
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