Help with wifi drivers

[Kiexli]

So i’m planning on buying an asus rog strix b450-f gaming motherboard, And I have been looking at various pci express wifi cards, however many of them say they require certain drivers to run on operating systems such as windows 10. Once these drivers are installed do they automatically allow your wifi card to work, or is there any extra setup steps. Also when using a wifi card, i’ve seen they have an internal usbi think is the best way to explain it, that connects to a header on the motherboard, so would that come with the wifi card?

[Kiexli]

25 minutes ago, NZgamer said:

I have a PCIe WiFi card so I can explain.

 

If you plug it in and boot into Windows, it will most likely find drivers off of the internet and install them for you. If it does not, then go ahead and install the drivers from their website or the DVD if you can do so.

 

No, there is no internal USB header to plug into. Where did you hear that from?

I was watching a video on the installation of the Asus PCE-AC55BT, because I was looking at getting it and just doing abit of research on it. I’ll send the video.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Kiexli said:

So i’m planning on buying an asus rog strix b450-f gaming motherboard, And I have been looking at various pci express wifi cards, however many of them say they require certain drivers to run on operating systems such as windows 10. Once these drivers are installed do they automatically allow your wifi card to work, or is there any extra setup steps. Also when using a wifi card, i’ve seen they have an internal usbi think is the best way to explain it, that connects to a header on the motherboard, so would that come with the wifi card?

There are no WiFi drivers built into Windows 10. 

 

There's two kinds of WiFi parts out there, ones that require CNVi and ones that do not. Intel chipsets that support CNVi can use the CNVi WiFi parts on a M2 slot. AMD Chipsets, and Intel chipsets without CNVi require the non-CNVi version. 

 

What is CNVi you ask? In short, it's a way to move the non-Radio parts of the WiFi chip to the motherboard chipset (think "winmodem") This allows the BT/WiFi radio to exist by itself on a PCIe card/m2 card. Or in other words, a way for laptop/NUC/ITX boards to cut costs.

 

If you have an AMD board, there is no equivalent, so you need to make sure whatever WiFi parts you buy are non-CNVi, as there is no hardware in the chipset to run them. This means that the WiFi card you buy will be more expensive. Most full-size PCIe WiFi cards are simply the NGFF (M2) card on a larger PCIe card, sometimes with larger antenna's or multiple antennas. Most of these tend to include Bluetooth because the underlying WiFi part has BT standard. This is why you see USB references in some WiFi card's specifications, because BT is USB, and thus needs a connection to the motherboard's USB 2.0 header:

What you need to make sure is that both drivers are installed.

 

WiFi drivers must be installed, and Bluetooth drivers must also be installed IF you plug in the USB header. If you do not want bluetooth support, then don't plug it in.

 

[TrigrH]

1 hour ago, Kiexli said:

So i’m planning on buying an asus rog strix b450-f gaming motherboard, And I have been looking at various pci express wifi cards,

buy a motherboard with onboard wifi, its worth the cost increase.

[Kiexli]

27 minutes ago, Kisai said:

There are no WiFi drivers built into Windows 10. 

 

There's two kinds of WiFi parts out there, ones that require CNVi and ones that do not. Intel chipsets that support CNVi can use the CNVi WiFi parts on a M2 slot. AMD Chipsets, and Intel chipsets without CNVi require the non-CNVi version. 

 

What is CNVi you ask? In short, it's a way to move the non-Radio parts of the WiFi chip to the motherboard chipset (think "winmodem") This allows the BT/WiFi radio to exist by itself on a PCIe card/m2 card. Or in other words, a way for laptop/NUC/ITX boards to cut costs.

 

If you have an AMD board, there is no equivalent, so you need to make sure whatever WiFi parts you buy are non-CNVi, as there is no hardware in the chipset to run them. This means that the WiFi card you buy will be more expensive. Most full-size PCIe WiFi cards are simply the NGFF (M2) card on a larger PCIe card, sometimes with larger antenna's or multiple antennas. Most of these tend to include Bluetooth because the underlying WiFi part has BT standard. This is why you see USB references in some WiFi card's specifications, because BT is USB, and thus needs a connection to the motherboard's USB 2.0 header:

What you need to make sure is that both drivers are installed.

 

WiFi drivers must be installed, and Bluetooth drivers must also be installed IF you plug in the USB header. If you do not want bluetooth support, then don't plug it in.

 

So do you have any suggestions for the asus rog strix b450-f? Because wifi cards so far are the most difficult for me to choose, i’m very new to this sort of stuff and this is a first build, so if you have any suggestions for wifi for that motherboard i would really appreciate it, if not that’s fine.

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, Kiexli said:

So do you have any suggestions for the asus rog strix b450-f? Because wifi cards so far are the most difficult for me to choose, i’m very new to this sort of stuff and this is a first build, so if you have any suggestions for wifi for that motherboard i would really appreciate it, if not that’s fine.

At this point you probably would be best to go with an Intel ax200 (not 201, the 201 is the CNVi model)

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/189347/intel-wi-fi-6-ax200.html

 

You can get it either as a M2 card or as a PCIe card, though unless your motherboard back panel has holes for antenna's, you're better off with the PCIe card, even if it's just the M2 card on it.

 

https://www.newegg.com/p/0XM-004T-000X4

 

Just make sure you pay attention that it says AX200, not AX201.

 

Alternatively you could try getting a Broadcom BCM4375 (WiFi 6) or BCM4389 (WiFi 6E) the latter is 3x3 MIMO.