I never thought I'd say this, but... I need gigabit WiFi speeds, or at least close to it to not bottleneck my connection. I have a Netgear Nighthawk X4S router, and its keeping up with my connection, but my WiFi adapter is not. So, I'm looking for a USB 3.0 WiFi adapter that can maintain 400 mbps easily on 802.11ac 5 GHz. The adapter is not going to be far from the router, so range isn't an issue. I can not use a Cat6 cable to my PC because my motherboard's RJ45 port is broken.
Or NIC for PCI Don't know reliable really fast wlan things, but I have been off the loop for long, still cable is always nicer performance wise if just possible.
My motherboard has no PCI, only PCI Express. I did however manage to get a PCI Express NIC, however installing it is a pain because my motherboard's expansion slots suck. After this experience with an MSI board, I think I'll go back to ASUS for my next build.
Yeah, PCI = PCI-E nowdays I guess. Asus seems to be only one that is still somewhat ok, I hope. I have had around 150 euro Gigabyte boards for really long time, never had issues with those, but with Z370 board what an worthless piece of junk, had to RMA in 2 weeks, horrible buzzing in audio with CPU load, then it started to be unstable too, same PSU in other system with much higher load is working perfectly, so that motherboard just was junk. Even had that bad electronics smell if you know what I mean. MSI, Asrock, those are so hit and miss, I guess same is true with Gigabyte too, EVGA motherboards are something to stay well clear of, so there is not much other than Asus, but I guess that even with those anything that is midrange or lower can suck. Really sad how overall quality has gone down since Z170 and what quality there was before that. Same time huge plastic covers are increasing so you can't even see any indications if motherboard is good or bad, not a coincidence I guess. Everything is covered with bling flashy lights, like shit with chrome. Anyway, have you been reading Tom's hardware about Wifi things? This was first that I saw there https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/d-link-dwa-192-usb-wi-fi-adapter,4422.html Probably bit expensive, but it has at least some information about Wifi tech so one knows to what to look for. Also D-Link is not exactly synonym of reliability, their stuff has been very short lived in my experience, lasts barely warranty period.
Sounds like something was damaged by heat, maybe during the manufacturing process? Have not noticed that since I'm still on a Z97 board. My i7 4790k CPU has been great the 4 years I've had it. Before that I had an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard (X58 chipset) and the BIOS was slightly buggy, but everything else about it was amazing. I got that with a Core i7 920 while the Core 2 and Phenom II were still the most commonly used gaming CPUs. Nope but I will soon. Yeah if I'm going to spend a significant chunk of change on hardware, D-Link is definitely not one of the brands I have in mind. I've seen some nice looking USB WiFi adapters from Netgear though (I've had an overall very good experience with Netgear's products lately. I have a Nighthawk X4S router and its performance is excellent, plus it has open source support).
All z370 boards have poor VRM compared to their z170 brothers and this one had similar to lower end even price was not quite lower end, also board did have some USB ports not working. While VRM temp never did reach above 70C, I guess it just was too weak and something gave in, any serious attempt of amperage caused instability. Likely that it had defect from the factory and just could not take it or then under engineered. Going to sell replacement without using it as it did last 1 day too long for changing the product to be accepted by seller (yeah, seller sucks). Netgear should be good indeed and it is very wise to stay clear of D-Link Asus seems to also have good support and as long as I remember it has been over engineered, which is kinda important these days when there is no point to upgrade even every 5th generation of Intel, 4790k is still strong, sure 8th gen is fast with multicore, but software is not quite yet using potential of that, rendering is of course, but sadly so much is still binded to single core world that I see much sense to skip 8th and maybe even 9th gen as 4790K still does the same as those at stock clocks when it comes to single core. Near future should bring something from competition and we see then how things start rolling. Also quality of motherboards I hope goes up in future or at least prices down as price vs quality is what is mostly taken hit. For usb wifi, vs new system that has maybe fast wifi on board, that is something to consider too, with 100 more on motherboard one can get quite nice piece of hardware, but if situation is really acute, then one just have to pay, that is life
Fyi I'm using a 3/4 years old TP-Link PCIe WLan card and it works flawlessly. Never had a problem (never had sudden internet drops) and it has a good range although it only has one antenna, so you can consider Tp-link too I think it's this one: https://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-11_TL-WN781ND.html It's old for today standards (I think), but since I don't have a fast connection it's fine. @fufsgfen I don't see this quality loss over the new motherboards (except the low range). It may be that I was lucky when I purchased it, but I don't have any problem with my motherboard (Asus). I don't know the VRM temperatures tho (I have HWMonitor but Idk what is the name given by the software to the VRM sensor)...
Now there are few points which you might not have considered: 1) It is Asus 2) You don't know how much harder VRM for example is pushed as you don't have data about temp. 3) Price of minimum acceptable quality is one that gone up clearly. PCB thickness, cooling design etc. there are lot of aspects.
Yeah, that may be. I always prefer Asus products over other brands My temperatures with my cpu under load with Prime95. Idk which one is VRM. Probably TMPIN4. That's true btw. Btw we went off topic a bit
HWinfo manages to show additional sensor that is not shown by my z170 vendor software or CPUID HW monitor, which is VRM temp for Z170 board, but if I keep HWinfo running after returning idle from high load, it randomly causes PC to shutdown, just coldly shuts off. I thought I cured it by bios update, but it did only helped some, something in HWinfo makes shutdown to happen. Asus sadly has poor placement of M2 slots, or too much plastic, I would of chosen that otherwise and probably have to get one at some point, but even Asus has boards that are not quite so over engineered, I think Prime was one of those to avoid as it had weaker power delivery. It is getting kinda hard to avoid buying pig in the bag, Wifi adapters by nature are also very hard to know which is good to get so traditionally you had reviews to trust, but those also start to be kinda skewed these days. One motherboard review for example gave lot of praise to audio quality and claimed audio to be so much better than 'old' 1150, in reality it was hard to hear music from all the buzzing and clicking/popping. So often most important part is what they left unsaid.
I used to love Asus's Zxx-A boards, they were what OnePlus was with phones. But when they branched out with their "TUF" and "PRIME" series, it got a bit odd and fragmented (pretty much like the whole of Asus tbh). As for the wifi, remember it can also be your access point at fault, not just your device. Getting Wi-Fi can be quite cheap and easy, getting fast Wi-Fi is not! If you are in any way serious about the speed of your connection, go with ethernet. you won't regret it. Also worth noting, that Power Line adapters (as good as they look) have underperformed horribly in my testing. on a 200mbps set, I would get maybe 80mbps. And they vary wildly depending on what is connected to your house's electrical system, I had an old fan that would make it go ballistic, it would transfer at like 1meg! and a motorised airfreshner which did the same.
