Wifi in PCI form or USB?

[EvanJackPenn]

Hi there! I'm interested in building my first ever PC (I'm taking the plunge!!! ). It's going to be in my room upstairs, so I don't really want any bright multi-coloured ethernet cables running up the stairs. And yes, I know - gaming on WiFi? I must be mad!

But I'm unsure how one should go about this. Should I be looking at buying USB adaptors/dongles or a PCI card. I have the space in my tower (a pretty smexy White Corsair 600T) for the PCI.

Does anyone know which is the best option considering price and that I'll be gaming with them. Or any alternatives would be nice!

Many thanks!!!!!

[razer121]

I would say a pci is better than dongle hands down...but then im no pro with computers! but i game on a pci card and its perfect, my msi dongle is rubbish mind!

[oolon]

I personally would prefer PCI however one advantage of USB is you can use a long USB cable to change the "aerial" position.

[EvanJackPenn]

I personally would prefer PCI however one advantage of USB is you can use a long USB cable to change the "aerial" position.

Ah yes! I never considered that one! Many thanks.

Also, does b or g or n really effect the quality? I think most have all three these days anyway.

[kalniel]

I personally would prefer PCI however one advantage of USB is you can use a long USB cable to change the "aerial" position.

Or just get a PCI card with a remote aerial. This is the one I use:



You want at least g. N is nice to have if all your equipment supports it and you want to transfer between computers or are a long distance from the router, but your internet connection will be many times slower than g so n won't speed that up.

[Agent]

Loads of the PCI ones are just the 'same' as their USB brothers with a PCI bridging chip on the PCB.

It's more down to the quality of the device as a whole, rather than its interface these days.

[MadduckUK]

It's going to be in my room upstairs, so I don't really want any bright multi-coloured ethernet cables running up the stairs.

get a black one

[Pob255]

There are some issues, drivers can be a right pain with pci cards, not sure what it's like with win7 but on xp it's easy to use the wrong set of drivers and then you're stuffed because xp will refuse to correctly remove the drivers so you can install the right ones.

USB ones don't have that issue, however the aerials on USB ones tend to be weaker (will depend on your signal strength) also windows can cause issues with some of them by powering them down, make sure in windows device settings that windows is not allowed to turn it off to save power and there's a setting in the advanced tab to manually set it to 100% output

Personally I would go with a pci card, we've got these motherboards with all these slots, we might as well use them

[Phage]

Stepson's build used a PCI card with aerials out the back. He's in the bedroom directly over the router and he gets full speed and good gaming.

[DanceswithUnix]

get a black one

We got a grey cable, and a big drill bit for drilling through the wall and running the cable outside.

Other possibility is mains powerline modems, they are quite fast & cheap these days. Still not ideal for gaming, but I believe no worse than wifi.

Can't personally recommend any, but they start at about £30 for a pair.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160665

[Pob255]

Renting means I cannot just drill holes in my walls, so I just ran cat around with gaffer tape

[EvanJackPenn]

Okay, many thanks people.

I'm currently looking at this adapter. I assume it will be pretty simple and easy to install, and will hopefully work!

I also assume it would work with this motherboard? It's PCI express, so it should work.

Thanks a lot people!

[jim]

Renting means I cannot just drill holes in my walls, so I just ran cat around with gaffer tape

?

[kalniel]

Okay, many thanks people.

I'm currently looking at this adapter. I assume it will be pretty simple and easy to install, and will hopefully work!

I also assume it would work with this motherboard? It's PCI express, so it should work.

Thanks a lot people!

Yes. Stick it in the slot above the graphics card for best fit.