Chinese Wireless Router LB-Link

Recently I bought a couple cheap wireless router LB-Link BL-600N from China during my trip there. I bought it because I found people were discussing on Chinese router forum saying it is the cheapest router (less than CAD$10) with very high spec (dual band 600M, gigabit Lan and USB) and supports Tomato firmware. Although people says it runs super hot and suffers from wireless dropouts, I bought it anyway because I have been always pretty lucky buying cheap routers and configure them with 3rd party firmware to run stably. I believe I can attach heatsink to it to solve the heat problem and the wireless dropout issue seems to be heat related.

After a months of effect, I admit my confidence is defeated.

First is the temperature. One guy on the forum used a laser thermometer tested the running temperature. Without heatsink mod, the inner metal shield case runs 90 degree celcius. With heatsink covering the entire metal shield case, the temperature lowers to 70 degrees celcius. I do not have thermometer but by touching, it can attest the claim. Without heatsink mod, in other words with stock setup, the router starts to restart itself randomly after two weeks obviously due to high temperature. And it keeps restarting every  few hours as long as the temperature is not lowered. With heatsink mod, it does not restart itself anymore.

Second, after restarting problem solved, I come to realize the wifi dropouts. It is happening with and without heatsink mod and on both of my routers. The heatsink I used is from an old Nvidia fanless video card and it almost as big as the router itself. It does not runs too hot to touch. So either the wifi part of the router is defective or the temperature should be even lower, which I will try if I come across a giant heatsink in future, LOL.

Edit after a year.

I have now been running this LB-Link BL-600N for a year without rebooting. I ended up sticking a big heatsink onto the metal shield of the router, with plastic case removed of course. Wi-Fi is also disabled because it is not stable with or without heatsink. I plugged a dual band Lenovo Newfi router configured as AP for wireless signal. This setup has been rock solid ever since.

The firmware running on LB-Link BL-600N is Tomato Shibby for Tenda N60.