Help me choose a wireless card please!

[seankir92]

So first and foremost this is the issue. I have a gaming pc build that i would like to add wireless connectivity to as to avoid having to bring a huge ethernet cable with me when i move my computer around. my motherboard has 3 pci slots. one which is a pci express 3.0 x16 (for my video card) the next is a pci express x1 and the third is a plain old pci slot. the issue is that my graphics card has a fan attached to it and covers my pci express x1 slot, so i am forced to use the pci slot. i already purchased a pci express x1 wifi card, not knowing i would have this issue, and it will not go in to any sort of slot at at all. i tried buying a pci express x1 ribbon cable extension thing to try to get under the graphics card fan but that is a no go. it will not work in the pci slot either (someone told me to try it) so i either must get a usb adapter, or a pci based adapter. i dont really know much about how the connectivity speeds really matter. i see them ranging from 54 mb/s up to 300 mb/s. i DO intend to play games through the card. the router will vary because it will be connecting to different routers occasionally. at home i use an ethernet cable so im not too concerned about that. i also do not really want to spend a lot of money (more than 40 ish) seeing as this is just a convenience thing. any help at all is appreciated! thank you.

 

[bill001g]

Games are not dependent on the speed of the adapter for good performance they use very little. What you plug the adapters into on your computer does not matter a lot unless you get the very latest 802.11ac which you need usb3 ports. The speed of the connection on the computer is faster than the wireless cards. On top of all this the internet connection most people have is much slower than any wireless cards. So it really doesn't matter a lot which you choose. The main choice would be if you wanted dual band and then you would need your router to support that also.

Games are primarily dependent on the data being delivered at a consistent rate with no packet loss. The amount of data is generally well under 1mbit/sec. Games use the delays between the packet to calculate timing in the game. Wireless does a bad job in these areas. They introduce random packet delays and packet loss which is why it is no recommended to play games on wireless. Even if it is inconvient a wired connection is many times better.

The main difference between internal cards and external ones is that the internal ones can have larger antenna. The downside is they are located close to the case. USB can be extended cheaply away from the case with a cheap cable. The best performing devices tend to be pci cards with antennas on short microwave rated coax but they also tend to be very expensive. You can get usb with large antenna but they are not real common.

When cost is a concern I would be looking at a USB that is already on a cable or buy a cable to start and place it on top of the computer.

 

[seankir92]

thank you very much for the information! I have been digging around a bit, and came up with this as a decent option. what is your opinion? any other suggestions? the price is good, it comes with a usb extension dock, and has been well reviewed. if you have any other suggestions please send me a link! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704045

 

[bill001g]

That tends to be one a lot of people like. It is limited to 150m but that likely doesn't matter.

 

[seankir92]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704135&cm_re=n600-_-33-704-135-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833315099

these are two other options i see that might work well. of these three what do you think would be the best? thanks again!

 

[bill001g]

Hard to say it should match your router features. Doesn't help if your router is also not dual band and can run 300m on each channel. They will likely all pretty much run the same.