MikroTik CRS804-4DDQ-hRM — 1U 400G QSFP56-DD Switch for AI Fabrics

Specifications

Overview

The MikroTik CRS804-4DDQ-hRM is a compact 1U switch built around four 400G QSFP56-DD cages and a Marvell 98DX7335 Prestera switch chip. MikroTik positions it squarely at AI clusters and storage fabrics - the layers where 100G aggregation has stopped keeping pace with GPU-node ingestion and NVMe tiering, but where a full chassis switch is neither affordable nor physically necessary.

Each QSFP56-DD cage steps down through 200G, 100G, 50G and 40G, so the same switch can uplink at 400G while fanning out to existing 100G compute nodes. Two 10 Gigabit RJ45 ports are marked MGMT and BOOT and can be assigned as the Etherboot port. The control plane is a quad-core ARM AL52400 at 2 GHz with 4 GB of DDR4 and 512 MB of NAND running RouterOS v7 at license level 6, which brings the full RouterOS routing, bridging and management feature set rather than a fixed-function switch CLI.

For deployment the unit takes dual hot-swap IEC AC supplies rated 100-240 V and draws 92 W idle, rising to roughly 123 W loaded, with two hot-swap fan modules and a -10 to +60 degrees C operating range. An included RMK-2x10/19 bracket lets two CRS804 units sit side by side inside a single rack unit, which doubles 400G port density without consuming additional rack space.

Key Benefits

4x 400G QSFP56-DD in 1U delivers 1.6 Tb/s of fabric-facing capacity at a fraction of chassis-switch cost and power. Rate stepping to 40G/100G/200G protects existing node investments while the uplink moves to 400G. Full RouterOS v7 brings routing, management and monitoring rather than a locked switch firmware. Dual hot-swap PSUs and fans plus 150 W PoE-out support resilient edge and storage deployments.

Applications

AI and GPU cluster aggregation, NVMe and storage fabric top-of-rack switching, 400G uplinks from 100G compute nodes, high-speed research and media networks, and PoE-powered camera or access-point aggregation.

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