well to be fair, i will just let @rextended off the leash, because 1. you're arrogant and full of yourself and 2. hes an ISP as well, so have fun
Not everyone is running homelabs in their parents basement and happy with 4GB memory router running some 2 Mbps websites and apps that no one knows about
This guy is something else man. 
No am not. I am responding with same confrontational energy.
The Dark Side of Confrontation Energy
So... BYE!
I dont take forums seriously as i know people dont act same in real life. We all type things that may seem bad intent but dont really mean that.
I dish out fire for fire, and its ok for things to get heated, it is all forum posts
So zero bad intent from my end
For those that dont want heat their way just dont send heat out and you will be fine 
Can you please mark this post as solution?
If you want 32gb RAM, and don't need as many interfaces. maybe this is for you: https://mikrotik.com/product/rds2216
For those that dont want heat their way just dont send heat out and you will be fine
That would be a nice thing to write on a box of matches.
No, that is not for me. That is not meant for major core routing or what am trying to do. They added more memory in that for the containers, which honestly is not enough but like i said before Mikrotik is making products for a small subset of their big bag customers. Why they come up with certain left field products these days. This is not just me saying this, this is out of their own mouth. So please dont come at me for that.
Just mentioned it because it has similar specs. But okay.
I see it the same way as walking into a store. I go in, say hello, have a look around, and if there's nothing I want, I just leave. No big deal.
I wouldn't stand there yelling at the staff about how everything they sell is garbage just because none of it is useful to me. And I definitely wouldn't start picking fights with random customers who happen to be in the store.
That's kind of how OP's posts come across to me here. It feels less like genuine criticism and more like they're just looking to stir things up.
Bye.
Only you can decide if the CCR2216 will fit your needs.
The CCR2216 is a fixed configuration router. While 16GB is enough for most of the users, others have complained that dimms weren't used instead of the memory being soldered onto the board.
If they had put 32GB instead of 16GB, the price would have been higher, especially now.
It's a tradeoff.
But comparing a CCR2216 to a MX204 isn't a fair comparison. The lowest ebay prices for used MX204 are around $8000.
Yeah huge tradeoff.
I dont need it to be exactly head on with MX204, just wanted the 32GB and could be fine but that extra 16GB they chickened out of, they lost many potential customers and that sucks. How much more to swap 16GB for 32GB? extra $100 to the price? $250? compared to lost market share opportunity and revenue.
I mean see how much revenue and cascading customers they could have had with it and now they releasing some other router with 16 x 10G RJ45 ports for some private customer they talking to.
Same with their CRS326, I have begged and begged Mikrotik to release a 48 x 10G SFP+ switch as brother to the CRS326 but till today they refused and instead making desktop looking 100G switches for private customers.
Evidence? Facts?
I want to talk about a critical choice in hardware engineering, specifically regarding the CCR2216 router. While it is a powerhouse, its long-term reliability heavily depends on its surface-mount components.
The decision to implement Omega-12 capacitors was, in my opinion, a missed opportunity. If the engineers had opted for Alpha-45 capacitors instead, the overall lifespan of the SMB components would be vastly superior.
Alpha-45 capacitors offer much lower Equivalent Series Resistance and significantly higher thermal tolerance. In high-density routing environments, where heat is the ultimate enemy, Omega-12 capacitors degrade faster, accelerating the wear on surrounding SMB parts.
By choosing Alpha-45, we would have achieved stable voltage regulation, lower thermal stress, and a dramatically extended lifespan for the entire board. In the world of core networking, longevity is not a luxury—it is a necessity.
Why Ford only sold one model of car 1914-1925 (The model T with several variations). And all Black.
To boost MX204 sales, after super-salesman-expert's advice, they're giving away a free CCR2216...
So.. you look smarter in real life, huh?
Time for a proper PC + ROS VM or baremetal version. So many options.
Increasing the RAM in MikroTik devices has always been possible in only one way: by replacing the chips on the board with identical ones that have a larger capacity and editing the corresponding value in the HARD section of the flash memory.
However, actual experiments described online are limited to the HAP Lite.
The router is the same. You are free to not use disks and containers. Othewise you have same CPU and more RAM.
True: same CPU.
False: The router is the same. (unless you consider the Ford Mustang to be the same vehicle as the Ford Ranger, since they both have the same engine).
Look at the block diagrams. The CCR and RDS have different switch chips. That may or may not make a difference, depending on the application.
CCR2216 block diagram
RDS2216 block diagram
This has all been discussed in this forum thread 25 Gbps ISP Fiber - Can the MikroTik RDS2216 Replace a CCR2216 as a Secure, High‑Performance Router? and this reddit thread Mikrotik RDS2216 vs CCR2216
Hope this explains it all, for you guys that hate AI
You hit the nail on the head. Network engineers and operators have been arguing this exact point on MikroTik's forums for years.
Because MikroTik builds its business model around selling cheap, highly integrated hardware bundled with custom switch chips, they never built a user-space software data plane like VPP or DPDK into RouterOS. They rely entirely on hardware offloading to cheap silicon or standard kernel packet processing.
The moment a network operator tries to scale past those small hardware limits with full BGP tables, RouterOS hits a brick wall, forcing users to choose between expensive enterprise hardware or migrating to open-source software routing stacks like VyOS. If MikroTik doesn't adapt their architecture to handle software data-plane acceleration for modern routing tables, they will continue to lose the mid-tier ISP and hosting market to whitebox solutions.
Thank you, Chat!
