I need helping picking a stable WiFi card.

[John55]

I bought this Asus wifi adapter that has been giving me issues for a long time. I tried looking into getting a new wifi card but all the reviews that I see claim how they are either unstable, or how slow their speeds become. I am looking for a wifi adapter that is strong enough to handle all of the 5Ghz channels because my Asus wifi card wasn't even capable of recognizing any of the 5Ghz channels when it legit says on the box it is an AC adapter. The card I have is ASUS PCE-AC56 PCI Wireless Express Adapter. 

 

Side question: does anyone know where I could find and download drivers without worrying about malware/viruses? Apparently, my wifi card has an updated driver but I cannot find it on the Broadcom website and I do not trust these shady websites. So if someone could find me the updated driver that would be great!

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, John55 said:

wasn't even capable of recognizing any of the 5Ghz channels

Either its a damaged card or the signal doesn't reach it. Generally Intel has the best WiFi adapters, though they generally come in only m.2 form factors, but they do make wireless cards that take M.2 wireless adapters. TP Link isnt bad either, but read the reviews first. 

 

4 hours ago, John55 said:

Side question: does anyone know where I could find and download drivers without worrying about malware/viruses? Apparently, my wifi card has an updated driver but I cannot find it on the Broadcom website and I do not trust these shady websites. So if someone could find me the updated driver that would be great!

The only place you should ever download drivers from are Microsoft (Windows update), the card manufacture, or the chip manufacture. If its outside any of those places, I wouldn't trust it. 

[John55]

On 7/11/2019 at 8:35 PM, Donut417 said:

Either its a damaged card or the signal doesn't reach it. Generally Intel has the best WiFi adapters, though they generally come in only m.2 form factors, but they do make wireless cards that take M.2 wireless adapters. TP Link isnt bad either, but read the reviews first. 

 

The only place you should ever download drivers from are Microsoft (Windows update), the card manufacture, or the chip manufacture. If its outside any of those places, I wouldn't trust it. 

Thank you so much for this answer. Will my mother board support M.2 WiFi cards so I can just buy an intel WiFi adapter? It’s the Asus Rog Strix z270e. Also, I’ve been looking at WiFi cards from intel and they all claim to have a short range so could you link me a good intel adapter?(only if it is compatible with my motherboard). I will put your response as the answer.

[Donut417]

10 hours ago, John55 said:

Thank you so much for this answer. Will my mother board support M.2 WiFi cards so I can just buy an intel WiFi adapter? It’s the Asus Rog Strix z270e. Also, I’ve been looking at WiFi cards from intel and they all claim to have a short range so could you link me a good intel adapter?(only if it is compatible with my motherboard). I will put your response as the answer.

The included WiFi adapter should work fine. If your having issues with range that is something a WiFi adapter might not help with. 5 GHz has limited range and that’s going to be the band that supports the fastest speed. Also 5Ghz tends to be more stable in my experience as your unlikely to find items actively interfering with it besides walls. Only suggestion I can give is this:

 

• put it your router in as central location in your home you can
• put your router in a high location to help spread it the signal

 

i think the reason intel is considered the best is because you tend to have less driver issues. Windows 10 some times is iffy with WiFi. Alternatively you can look at power line and MoCA adapters. Power line adapters tend to be slower but be more stable as long as your wiring is good. MoCA is stable as well and can offer speeds up to 800 Mbps, but is expensive and you need coax already ran.

[John55]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

The included WiFi adapter should work fine. If your having issues with range that is something a WiFi adapter might not help with. 5 GHz has limited range and that’s going to be the band that supports the fastest speed. Also 5Ghz tends to be more stable in my experience as your unlikely to find items actively interfering with it besides walls. Only suggestion I can give is this:

 

• put it your router in as central location in your home you can
• put your router in a high location to help spread it the signal

 

i think the reason intel is considered the best is because you tend to have less driver issues. Windows 10 some times is iffy with WiFi. Alternatively you can look at power line and MoCA adapters. Power line adapters tend to be slower but be more stable as long as your wiring is good. MoCA is stable as well and can offer speeds up to 800 Mbps, but is expensive and you need coax already ran.

Ok, thank you for all the help you have been giving me. I found this wifi card on Newegg: https://www.newegg.com/fenvi-fv-2030t-pci-express/p/0XM-00JK-00039?Description=wifi card&cm_re=wifi_card-_-9SIADXZ81V9696-_-Product. Its called the Fenvi FV-2030T. It is an m.2 to PCIe converter. It uses the Intel 9260 chip. The description says "modem must be on 160Mhz". Does this mean this card can only connect to the 5Ghz band if the modem is on 160Mhz? Or can this card work with 5Ghz channels just fine?

[Donut417]

5 minutes ago, John55 said:

Ok, thank you for all the help you have been giving me. I found this wifi card on Newegg: https://www.newegg.com/fenvi-fv-2030t-pci-express/p/0XM-00JK-00039?Description=wifi card&cm_re=wifi_card-_-9SIADXZ81V9696-_-Product. Its called the Fenvi FV-2030T. It is an m.2 to PCIe converter. It uses the Intel 9260 chip. The description says "modem must be on 160Mhz". Does this mean this card can only connect to the 5Ghz band if the modem is on 160Mhz? Or can this card work with 5Ghz channels just fine?

It means your router must support 160Mhz channel widths to get full speed. Other wise that should work. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

I can't help thinking that heatsink is a gimmick as that Intel adapter is designed for laptops.  Would be pretty useless if it ran so hot it needed a heatsink when no laptops I'm aware of cool the WiFi card like that.

Although I suppose the heatsink might be to compensate for having less airflow than a laptop in some cases.

[John55]

7 hours ago, Donut417 said:

It means your router must support 160Mhz channel widths to get full speed. Other wise that should work. 

Last question, my current modem supports 161Mhz but not 160Mhz. Is there a difference between 161 and 160?

[John55]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I can't help thinking that heatsink is a gimmick as that Intel adapter is designed for laptops.  Would be pretty useless if it ran so hot it needed a heatsink when no laptops I'm aware of cool the WiFi card like that.

Although I suppose the heatsink might be to compensate for having less airflow than a laptop in some cases.

Most likely is a gimmick but it's cheap and converts the intel wifi card(which are known to be the most stable with Windows 10).

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, John55 said:

Last question, my current modem supports 161Mhz but not 160Mhz. Is there a difference between 161 and 160?

I dont think there is a difference. Fact is you will NOT get full speeds regardless as there is always some form of interference. I think you will be fine.

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 7/14/2019 at 12:56 AM, John55 said:

Last question, my current modem supports 161Mhz but not 160Mhz. Is there a difference between 161 and 160?

There must be some confusion here, as WiFi channel widths are 20, 40, 80 and 160Mhz.  Maybe a typo in the routers UI?

A card that supports higher can support any of the lower ones too.  But I've not seen anyone test above 80Mhz as its the most common.

Also worth noting that 2.4Ghz only supports 20Mhz and 40Mhz, and usually only 20Mhz can actually be used (if its following the law) as with only three usable channels at 20Mhz, there is almost always another network nearby using the other channel that 40Mhz would use and its forbidden to use 40Mhz then so as not to mess up other peoples network performance.

[John55]

16 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

There must be some confusion here, as WiFi channel widths are 20, 40, 80 and 160Mhz.  Maybe a typo in the routers UI?

A card that supports higher can support any of the lower ones too.  But I've not seen anyone test above 80Mhz as its the most common.

Also worth noting that 2.4Ghz only supports 20Mhz and 40Mhz, and usually only 20Mhz can actually be used (if its following the law) as with only three usable channels at 20Mhz, there is almost always another network nearby using the other channel that 40Mhz would use and its forbidden to use 40Mhz then so as not to mess up other peoples network performance.

Ah, thanks for the reply. It is odd that my modem has 161 Mhz as an option. I googled for this for hours and 161 never showed up.