QNAP QSW-M7308R-4X Internal Hardware Overview
Inside the switch, we get a compact and straightforward layout.
Starting with the fans, we get two 1U fans on either side of the AC power input. An important item to note here is that the chassis does not have a lot of side or rear venting, so the design is that these fans are pulling air through the chassis. It is a small feature, but these are 4-pin PWM fans which means they would be relatively easy to replace. Unlike some MikroTik switches in this class, however, they are not hot swappable, nor is the power supply. To be fair, on many half-width switches from larger networking brands the fans and PSUs are not hot swappable either.
This is our management board.
This provides the connectivity for our console and 1GbE management port.
On the main switch PCB
Under the heatsink, we found a Marvell Prestera 98DX7324 switch chip.
Here is the block diagram for the Marvell 98DX73xx family:
This is similar to what you might see in MikroTik’s 25GbE and 100GbE switches. We get low-power and higher-speed ports, which is nice. Here is what the switch looks like without the heatsink on that chip.
In case you were wondering what that other big chip is, it is a Lattice LCMX02-1200UHC FPGA. These are used in switches because they can boot in something like 1ms and can therefore be online to drive the blinking lights and other lower-level features.
The QSFP28 cages have heatsinks.
Here is a look at the internal power supply.
Next, let us get to the management.
