Razer Blade 14 networking issues

blergous · November 16, 2019

So, I own a Razer Blade 14 2017 edition, which I love for the most part - it's powerful, light and really slick. Only real problems I have with it are the lack of port and this - constant connection issues. At first I thought this was only an issue with the WiFi adapter (My blade has a Killer Wireless 1535) but having bought an ethernet adapter and connected it directly to my router, i'm experiencing similar issues - frequent disconnects, constant network hitches in video games and abominable download speeds (my speed test puts me at 40Mbps down/3.5Mbps up with a 10ms ping) which are often as low as 50Kbps. Does anyone know what I can do to improve this? I would really appreciate some advice.

Oh, also worth mentioning - I live in the middle east, could my location also have an effect on the quality of my connection? Most of the media I consume is american/canadian, you see.

Donut417 · November 16, 2019

2 hours ago, blergous said:

So, I own a Razer Blade 14 2017 edition, which I love for the most part - it's powerful, light and really slick. Only real problems I have with it are the lack of port and this - constant connection issues. At first I thought this was only an issue with the WiFi adapter (My blade has a Killer Wireless 1535) but having bought an ethernet adapter and connected it directly to my router, i'm experiencing similar issues - frequent disconnects, constant network hitches in video games and abominable download speeds (my speed test puts me at 40Mbps down/3.5Mbps up with a 10ms ping) which are often as low as 50Kbps. Does anyone know what I can do to improve this? I would really appreciate some advice.

Oh, also worth mentioning - I live in the middle east, could my location also have an effect on the quality of my connection? Most of the media I consume is american/canadian, you see.

Do connection issues happen on other devices as well?

blergous · November 17, 2019

22 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Do connection issues happen on other devices as well?

Very rarely, and never to the degree that they do with the Razer. With the family pc the internet will sometimes lag or be slow for no reason, and the wifi can sometimes act weird when I try to connect to it with my phone, but those issues happen every few weeks whereas with the Blade it happens *every day.*

Donut417 · November 17, 2019

2 hours ago, blergous said:

Very rarely, and never to the degree that they do with the Razer. With the family pc the internet will sometimes lag or be slow for no reason, and the wifi can sometimes act weird when I try to connect to it with my phone, but those issues happen every few weeks whereas with the Blade it happens *every day.*

I know the the Killer branded Ethernet adapters are considered to be poor quality. Im not sure on their wireless adapters. You can try with installing new drivers. Try both new and old drivers. Some times you find that older drivers just work better.

Another option is to try a Live CD version of Linux. Just to take Windows out of the equation. Because it could be an OS issue. If you notice no issues in Linux then you know its Windows issue. Then you can think about reinstalling Windows. If Linux suffers the same then Id start looking at your router/ISP. The fact that other machines dont have issues, as well, even though they dont have as many and as often. That leads me to belive that you also have issues with your equpiment and or ISP as well.

Also do you know if your ISP throttles certian traffic? Some ISP's I know do. Hell my ISP got caught throttling Bit Torrent traffic. Its acutally one of the big reason Net Neutrality got put in place orginally here in the US.

blergous · November 17, 2019

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

I know the the Killer branded Ethernet adapters are considered to be poor quality. Im not sure on their wireless adapters. You can try with installing new drivers. Try both new and old drivers. Some times you find that older drivers just work better.

Another option is to try a Live CD version of Linux. Just to take Windows out of the equation. Because it could be an OS issue. If you notice no issues in Linux then you know its Windows issue. Then you can think about reinstalling Windows. If Linux suffers the same then Id start looking at your router/ISP. The fact that other machines dont have issues, as well, even though they dont have as many and as often. That leads me to belive that you also have issues with your equpiment and or ISP as well.

Also do you know if your ISP throttles certian traffic? Some ISP's I know do. Hell my ISP got caught throttling Bit Torrent traffic. Its acutally one of the big reason Net Neutrality got put in place orginally here in the US.

I've seen it suggested before that I replace this internet adapter with a different better one. I'm not sure how to do it and would appreciate some guidance or advice as I am not incredibly technically proficient and really don't want to destroy the most expensive piece of tech I own.

Switching to Linux isn't really an option IMO, almost all the things I need the laptop for (games, my editing software, Word) are windows exclusive. I've considered it before but we'll have to see.

As for my ISP, i'm really not sure. Can you help me understand how to check? I've never really interacted with my ISP as far as i'm aware.

Donut417 · November 17, 2019

25 minutes ago, blergous said:

I'm not sure how to do it and would appreciate some guidance or advice as I am not incredibly technically proficient

Laptop WiFi adapters are in a M.2 format like SSD's. Only the slot used for storage and used for WiFi are keyed diffrently. The biggest issue you might have if Razer white lists cards in the BIOS. If they do that then only the cards on the White List will work. So you will have to research what cards people have gotten to work. Intel based WiFi adapters tend to be the better ones however.

26 minutes ago, blergous said:

Switching to Linux isn't really an option IMO

Never said swtich. I said try a Live CD. Which is bootable verson that runs off a CD or Flash Drive. As I said this takes Windows out of the equation. Because if it works in Linux then its a Windows Issue. If you determine Windows is the issue then you can attempt to reinstall the OS, some times that solves the issue.

28 minutes ago, blergous said:

As for my ISP, i'm really not sure. Can you help me understand how to check? I've never really interacted with my ISP as far as i'm aware.

Well it depends what kind of Internet you have. Me I have Cable (coax) thru Comcast. So if you have the same type of internet as me I can help. If you have any type of DSL I wont be much help.