Cheap Desktop 400GbE Switch MikroTik CRS804-4DDQ-HRM Review
This article reviews the MikroTik CRS804-4DDQ-hRM, a high-speed 400GbE switch designed for data centers and lab environments. It highlights the device's cost-effectiveness per gigabit and provides a technical breakdown of its port configuration and physical design.
Why it matters
It offers a budget-friendly networking solution for high-performance computing clusters, making 400GbE infrastructure more accessible for smaller labs and research setups.
Today, we are taking a look at the MikroTik CRS804-4DDQ-hRM. We have a number of these now and have been running our RDMA network backend for the 8x NVIDIA GB10 cluster for several months now, using one. We also have an NVIDIA GB300 Station cluster running on another (using DR4 optics). The exciting part of this is that there are four 400GbE QSFP56-DD ports for a total of 1.6Tbps of network bandwidth. The list price is $1295, but these often sell at a street price of $1100 or so, making this under $0.70/Gbps. Putting that into perspective, it is like an 8-port 1GbE switch for only $5.50 per Gbps. While $1100 is not a low number, on a $/Gbps basis, this is actually really cheap for a new switch.
If you want to purchase these, they are in high demand, but we bought ours from B&H ( Affiliate link ).
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