It Took MONTHS to Solve This WiFi Problem… but I DID!

[Edward78]

22 minutes ago, Helpful Tech Witch said:

Bluetooth audio is objectively worse…

historically audio latency and quality has been terrible with Bluetooth, it’s part of why every pair of Bluetooth earbuds sucks compared to wired alternatives

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

12 minutes ago, Edward78 said:

 

Just because good Bluetooth speakers exist doesn’t mean that it’s comparable to what he is using now…

[Edward78]

17 hours ago, Helpful Tech Witch said:

Just because good Bluetooth speakers exist doesn’t mean that it’s comparable to what he is using now…

I never said it was, just trying to help.

[Edward78]

https://www.howtogeek.com/851432/how-to-fix-bluetooth-audio-delay/

[ottawahacker]

On 12/4/2022 at 1:19 PM, atliss said:

Hey real quick, at 6:05 when you guys mention SDR's, might wanna put a disclaimer that the RTL-SDR/RTL2832U series can only get to a max of 1.7Ghz or so without a downconverter. It IS model dependent.

Had the same thought after watching the video. I would really like to figure out some 5 Ghz wifi issues in my house. I'm going to guess that that these SDR devices won't give a full picture since they only go to 1.7Ghz but they could point to devices that have harmonics in the 5 Ghz spectrum? The only other alternative I found is the Tiny SA Ultra which goes all the way up to 6 Ghz. Any other suggestions?

[tmp_user9000]

Story time: electromagnetic interference (EMI)

 

Had a perfectly working system/PC using a wifi connection.

One day, gaming, playing MORDHAU, my system shuts down and it smells burned.I immediately pull the power plug.

After inspecting my components and doing some tests i figured out that my GPU was the cause of this. A Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti, 1 month after warranty...

I disassembled the card and saw a black hole burned into the PCB. Comparing pictures of the same PCB models online, i knew that instead of the black hole there is normally a tiny SMD-resistor, worth 0.0030$.

Im no professional but i guessed that either the resistor gave up over time or a component before it was faulty and put out some current the resistor couldnt handle. Ordered a new resistor to repair with my soldering iron. Never did that due to time, space and the risk of ruining my remaining setup as only test-bench.

 

Sooo, new GPU it is. Also bad timing because GPU's prices were already rising. Bought a MSI RTX 2070. Hated the price tag at this time but the inflation was laughtable compared to now.

Installed new GPU in the system and... works! Couldnt really play for 2-3 Months, just some light games and office/www work. All fine.

Then i started gaming again and noticed some ping spikes during FPS games. For a second my ping would go from normal to like 1000ms+. Every half minute it would do that, like a clock. It would only occur during specific games and was just fine idling. Did some infinite cmd pinging to google and it would show me exactly the packet drops and delay for the second every 30 seconds. Desktop doing nothing, it was just fine!

You get a ton of results searching for "ping spikes" for those games, mostly people telling you to use a wired connection, thx for nothing!

So i looked into the my wifi/network. I use the Wifi my mainboard came with, pre installed module with direct antennas pointing away from the I/O shield. Dual band 2.4GHz and 5GHz which my router and network is configured for.

I tried every wifi card setting, reconfigured the router and network. Nothing helped, except some weird adapter settings that forced my card using only 5GHz with 802.11a mode and locked bandwith at 20MHz, dropping the data transfer rate to unusable amounts. I replaced the internal antenna cables from the wifi card, replaced the antennas, replaced the wifi card with a newer model and replaced the I/O shield (its missing some metal pins for connection).

Still same problem.

One day i unplugged the GPU for cleaning and noticed, that there was no issue using the onboard grpahics. So its definetly the GPU but i have no problems during office work. Did some tests and it was indeed, whenever the GPU needed to do some heavier loads the Wifi has again its interval signal drops.

At this point i thought about EMI and looked at my integrated Wifi again. The antennas are coming straight out of the I/O and the GPU is sitting in the first slot beneath it. So i bought an extension cable that fits the antenna mounts, length 1,5m, and set up the antennas at the other side of my desk.

NO MORE WIFI ISSUES. Problem fixed.

 

My MSI RTX 2070 creates such a strong EMF that it interferes with the Wifi antennas at the I/O. The extension cable shields the connection good enought, that the antennas can work further away without problems.

 

Such a hassle. Now sitting at stable 400MBit/s wireless data transfer rate, which is just fine considering the travel distance, obstacles between and hardware used.