Best wireless solution for a desktop

[EvanJackPenn]

Hi guys,

I'm looking at building a gaming rig in the near future. Unfortunately, it will need to be used upstairs - the router is downstairs. Hence why I need wireless. I know that it's heresy and I should be playing wired, but I have no choice.

I've looked around at both PCI cards and USB sticks; I've been looking at 300Mbps, 802.11n ones. However, all of the reviews I read are AWFUL. Poor speed, poor performance, poor range, poor usability.

Do any of you have any recommendations as to which to get?

Thanks

(Sorry, in a bit of a rush. Might edit later to make it read better )

[djnaff]

I used to use homeplugs will get better more reliable speeds than wireless in most cases
I ran a cat 6 cable up the side of the house when I upgraded to gigabit lan

[smargh]

TL;DR: wifi is horrible, try to persuade house owner to run cat5e up the outside wall.

My mother has a HTPC. The router is two floors down.

I tried wifi first - two bridged WRT54G. Unreliable signal, very slow.

A few months later I put her onto two Linksys homeplugs. One failed. That's fine, sh*t happens. Replaced it with a spare. Became concerned that the summer heat caused the failure, so put a fan on the upstairs one and it continued working fine. However, she was never able to use iPlayer because the picture often froze, despite the 20Mbit connection.

Eventually she acknowledged that it was crap, and let me run cat5e PE outdoor cable outside up the wall to the attic. iPlayer runs fine, and she now has a NAS downstairs to back up her HDD to.

[EvanJackPenn]

I really don't have the option to do so. However, I will be going to university which will have ethernet ports. But for my current situation, it can't be wired.

[DDY]

If expense isn't a major concern, I recommend Intel's mini PCIe wireless cards, e.g. 5300, 3945ABG or 4965AGN to name some. To fit these on a desktop you'll need a mini PCIe to PCIe adaptor and one or more antennas, these adaptors including antennas and the Intel wireless cards can be found on the bay for less than £10 and £20 delivered respectively.