Closer Look

The MSI AXE6600 router comes flat packed with the six antennas folded one over the other to where it would not feel out of place in a Boston Dynamics product portfolio. The antennas are simple enough to rotate and lift upward to now give you a more traditional altar-style form factor, albeit with the six antennas positioned on the sides and back (two per side) do make it seem more normal looking than some others I've seen. I was also immediately reminded of the MSI GT series of gaming laptops from the design and color scheme employed for the chassis, albeit its plastic here rather than metal. I would not call the AXE6600 a clean and minimalist design thus, given the more aggressive and angular aesthetics, and this is even before we get to the LEDs used! There is plenty of ventilation on the front and underneath whereas the top is dominated by a large acrylic button shaped like the MSI dragon logo which is used to toggle through the QoS modes available on the router. There are a few more silicone covered buttons above in addition to another acrylic window to depict the indicator LEDs in use. When set up for use, the AXE6600 takes up 34 x 22.5 x 20 cm and weighs ~1.1 kg.


A look from the sides shows more of the "gamery" aesthetics used here, which may or may not be to your liking. For me it's somewhat made cheap by the use of injection molded plastic that is clipped in place and not in a secure manner either. This does mean you can remove the two side covers easily although now that means a clear view of the vents that these plastic pieces have been hiding. I will give MSI credit for planning out its passive cooling here, and it is all the more impressive as we shall soon see. The antennas themselves are secured via a ball-and-socket joint of sorts allowing rotary and up-down motion to keep them folded flat for transportation or raised up in use—you can also thus direct them towards the connected devices.


You need to get the antennas out of the way on the back to access the ports here. MSI provides a power and reset port with a dedicated power switch which was nice to see, but not as much as a network-attached USB 3.2 Gen 1 (USB 3.0) port that the bigger players in this market have decided to skip lately. Then we get to the five Ethernet ports in the form of a 2.5 GigE WAN and four GigE LAN ports. These are interchangeable depending on whether you want faster internet connectivity from your modem or have a faster switch to a single device. I would have rather them all be multi-gigabyte ports to not make you choose though! The underside continues to have plenty of ventilation cut into the plastic wherein we get a sneak peek at the internals too. There are two cutouts here to hang the router off hooks on your wall, for example, as well as a sticker with default log-in credentials printed and a QR code to speed up the setup. We also see four rubber pads on the corners that help provide friction against the resting surface as well as prevent any scratches to the router casing itself.


Removing these pads reveals Phillips head screws that keep the router assembled. Of course, that meant I had to try and take the router apart after all testing was completed, but note the sneaky warranty sticker on top of one of these screws. Remove the screws and then use a thin, flat object to help pry apart interlocking plastic tabs keeping the plastic lid in place on the body. There isn't much to see on the lid aside from the integrated buttons. More important is the PCB which comes MSI branded and held in place with a couple more screws. There are also internal cables going from the various buttons and the antenna connectors themselves. These latter cables are also tied to LEDs at the bottom of the antenna shafts, which in turn are passed upward into the diffusing plastic sections to light up the antennas indirectly. As such, you don't have to worry about the antennas themselves losing functionality from aesthetic electronics in the way.


Carefully separating the PCB from the bottom panel and lifting it off shows an overkill cooling system that MSI says is also inspired by its laptop division. Indeed, the relevant hardware on the other side of the PCB comes in contact with a large aluminium heatsink that then get two heatpipes leading to graphene-coated aluminium fin stacks for added heat dissipation. The various vents in the chassis are to help direct any room airflow inside to cool the hardware and get the hotter air out. Assisting in contact are thermal pads both thick and thin, although we do not get more specific information about these.


MSI is using a Qualcomm QCN9024 WiFi 6E chipset in the RadiX AXE6600 which has a Qualcomm IPQ6010 quad core processor running at 1.8 GHz and is paired with a Macronix 256 MB flash memory module in addition to 512 MB DDR4 RAM. The processor is why the RadiX AXE6600 doesn't have more than one multi-GigE Ethernet port here since it can only do 2x 2.5 Gbps, 5x 1 Gbps, or the 1x 2.5 + 4x 1 Gbps configuration MSI ended up going with. There is also a Qualcomm QCA8075 5-port Ethernet transceiver and the various ports are soldered neatly on a multi-layer PCB, as is the norm.


With all six antennas already discussed earlier, the only thing to do for set up is to plug in the power cable and provided Ethernet cable, going from an available LAN port on your modem or gateway to the WAN port as seen above. Turn on the router using the on/off switch on the back and you will see the device light up in red as seen above. It's easier to see in the dark but remember those are not LEDs directly placed on the antennas as opposed to being underneath at the base itself. The logo button also lights up the same color and there are more LEDs around the buttons up top too. These are RGB LEDs that change colors based on the operating mode (QoS mode really) but can also be synced up to any other hardware compatible with MSI Mystic Light RGB LED control software. As such, if you have MSI-branded motherboards and / or peripherals then you can actually configure the RadiX AXE6600 to join in on the light show. Note that the LED Off button only turns off the indicator lights up top and not these more distracting ones, and I suppose we live in an age where RGB LEDs are considered a gaming feature to help MSI further justify the AXE6600 as a gaming router. Thankfully you can press and hold the MSI logo button for ~2 seconds to toggle the LEDs on the antennas on/off.