So annoying high end motherboards with Wifi.

[Grimlakin]

I do NOT understand this folks. Are so many people really building high end gaming systems to put their online gaming experience at the whims of your routers wifi flakyness? Why introduce that additional bit of latency?

 

[Dan_D]

You'd be surprised how many people I've played games with who use WiFi on higher end systems. I don't get it either, but that's what they do.

 

[Grimlakin]

You'd be surprised how many people I've played games with who use WiFi on higher end systems. I don't get it either, but that's what they do.

Makes zero sense that we have to buy more basic boards missing some features we might otherwise use because we explicitly do not want Wifi.

Like I don't need an integrated sound card. I get it it's part of all motherboards today. But remember when it was an and also and everyone that gamed was getting add in boards from vendors like Soundblaster, and Turtle Beach, and Roland? Now most people get by with whatever.

You know what... here's what I want in a motherboard.

Support for the socket of CPU of your choice. Be it AMD or Intel.

6 or more on board USB ports and expansion ports for another 4. All at the current high speed. Maybe one pair on USB 2.0.

On board high speed ethernet. Be that 10g or 5g as long as it can step down to 1g I'll be fine but I want it to support greater speeds.

Minimum of 2 high speed PCIE M.2 slots.

2 x16 PCIE card slots and 2+ PCIE standalone spots spaced so all can be used even if double height cards are installed.

Maximum slots for CPU support be they dual channel or quad channel and far enough that I don't have to dance to install a CPU heat sync. (Heck I could be ok with them being on the back of the board if my case supported it, if that means I gain a nanosecond or two of speed.)

Oh and a thunderbolt port. I want that as well for people that do multi-media work!

On board sound because everyone has it.

Actively or good passively cooled VRM's and other heat generating components.

That's it. I don't want your wifi, or your bling, or any of that stuff.

I'm from the era of beige towers when an aluminum Lan-Li case was AMAZING. I don't want/or need your bling....

Not saying I don't have LEd ram, LED heatsync, giant led intake fan on the side panel of my case and two Led intake fans on the front... but they were all bought for their function not their looks.

 

[nEo717]

I do NOT understand this folks. Are so many people really building high end gaming systems to put their online gaming experience at the whims of your routers wifi flakyness? Why introduce that additional bit of latency?

------

I'm fan of high-end boards without all the stuff on it, WiFi being worst offender... Everything is as many RGB lights as can fit with WiFi and Bluetooth.

 

[Eduardo_Domingot]

I dont get why you would want to pay an arm and a leg and not get the most current feature set possible. High end systems do more than just constantly game and we all dont have access to a good wired connection in our homes. I see this as much ado about nothing. Turn the WIFI off after you power up your system, problem solved.

 

[Grimlakin]

I dont get why you would want to pay an arm and a leg and not get the most current feature set possible. High end systems do more than just constantly game and we all dont have access to a good wired connection in our homes. I see this as much ado about nothing. Turn the WIFI off after you power up your system, problem solved.

Why buy something you've zero intention to use? That's my whole point. There are so many and also features that it makes no sense.

It's like buying a car... you get the features you want and try to avoid the cost of features you don't want. Same premise here. If I know I'm NEVER going to run my tower on a wireless connection, why get it?

 

[Brian_B]

My ISP is bad enough that the difference between WIFi and Wired isn’t really noticeable.

Also rural, so not really a lot of WIFi signal competition.

That being said, I don’t have any motherboards that have baked in WIFi, and when I do use WIfi I use external adapters that I can reposition easily.

 

[Dan_D]

I dont get why you would want to pay an arm and a leg and not get the most current feature set possible. High end systems do more than just constantly game and we all dont have access to a good wired connection in our homes. I see this as much ado about nothing. Turn the WIFI off after you power up your system, problem solved.

The problem is that not everyone will use WiFi and don't want to pay for it. This generally stands to reason as the WiFi models tend to be slightly more expensive than the standard models. However, if we didn't have WiFi models, the price would probably get jacked up to increase the margin. Basically, they wouldn't necessarily pass the savings onto us. Right now, the manufacturers charge a premium for the feature, albeit a small one.

I've heard all kinds of reasons why people use WiFi. The biggest reason is convenience and not having to run cable all over their house. One excuse I've often heard is: "My wife / girlfriend / parents won't let me have wires running across the house." In the case of parents, I could see that. In the case of a wife or girlfriend, I doubt this is truly the case. If you take the time you can hide the wiring under the carpet without damage to a rental property such as an apartment. I've done it everywhere I've been for the last 20 years. Its only the last 7 where I've had homes with built in network jacks.

In any case, I have found WiFi to be too unstable and too unreliable for gaming. The large houses I have combined with huge steel cases and other potential interference has always made it less than stellar. I can use it for streaming Netflix most of the time, but that buffers ahead making it possible. That doesn't work with online gaming.

I play games with tons of people that have no trouble out of WiFi and plenty others who suffer from rampant disconnects, poor performance, latency issues etc. I wouldn't put up with that so I run wired connections for everything but some of the TV's in the house.

 

[kschendel]

One excuse I've often heard is: "My wife / girlfriend / parents won't let me have wires running across the house." In the case of parents, I could see that. In the case of a wife or girlfriend, I doubt this is truly the case. If you take the time you can hide the wiring under the carpet without damage to a rental property such as an apartment.

You must have been very fortunate in your choice of wives / girlfriends. Carpet has fallen out of favor in decorating today, particularly wall-to-wall, and unless you're going to fish cables through walls (not always easy/possible without tearing them up), it's often impossible to hide a cable run. I know my wife certainly wouldn't allow an exposed cable coming from the basement into the office, since it would be visible in the central hallway of the house. Fortunately we had a network outlet installed in the office when we had the adjoining bathroom torn apart, 15 or so years ago.

 

[Grimlakin]

If you are a home owner there are many better solutions to Wifi available. For your laptops and consoles and streaming devices wifi away. Buy for your desktop... hardwired is the only way to go.

We need a new 'hacker' movie called HardWired. Sigh...

 

[Brian_B]

We need a new 'hacker' movie called HardWired.

Think I saw it in the Adult section

 

[noko]

I like wired myself as well, never had a consistent WiFi experience. Running cables you have many options, attic, house trim, some even can install beneath their homes, even outside if you don't mind drilling a hole through a wall (cable buy will not ask or hesitate doing just that for your cable} put caps on both sides of the wall and seal it up.

 

[Pandur]

For gaming wifi is poor at the best of times, compared to ethernet.
I had to use wifi for a while, a couple years ago, and it was causing me constant grief while gaming. So I did some testing:

My gaming pc had a 3x3 Asus rog wifi5 pcie card connected to my 3x3 wifi5 Asus router. So a better wifi adapter than what you would get onboard with most motherboards today.

With direct line of sight between the two, this setup had on average a 5% packet loss. This was on the 5GHz band so there was no interference from the usual 2.4GHz culprits such as microwave ovens.

Moved the computer back under the desk, out of line of sight of the router, and that figure crept towards 10%.

Stretched an ethernet cable across the living room into the computer room one weekend for some testing; onboard Intel nic to same Asus router = 0% packet loss.

The ping is similar, but man is the experience different. I ended up installing that ethernet cable for good after that weekend.

Wifi card was a pce-ac68 and the router was a rt-ac68u for reference.

And I wholeheartedly agree. I want my highend motherboards without wifi, preferably no rgb or onboard sound as well. But I’ll settle for no wifi.

 

[nEo717]

Anyone Gaming on WiFi 6 Router/Access Point and Adapter? We got sample (and review) of WiFi 6 - surprisingly even the ping (latency) seemed pretty strong (9ms vs 7ms wired), but that was very little testing and just out of the box.

 

[Grimlakin]

Looking forward to the WiFi 6 review. What about packet loss and distance from router/physical interference? I know I know you're working on it right?

 

[nEo717]

Looking forward to the WiFi 6 review. What about packet loss and distance from router/physical interference? I know I know you're working on it right?

Sorry, I should of clarified in original post - internal test (at our company - I'm senior engineer is all) - we don't post results etc... I'm in the camp of not being a fan of wireless, so that being said, WiFi 6 may change my opinion of all things Wireless though (so far its fast and stable).

 

[Grimlakin]

Wow are you rolling it out to your main floors where people are working?

Have you had to increase density of routers/boosters for it?

Do you need one in the ceiling above meeting rooms or is general proliferation just fine?

Now I'm more curious.

 

[nEo717]

Wow are you rolling it out to your main floors where people are working?

Have you had to increase density of routers/boosters for it?

Do you need one in the ceiling above meeting rooms or is general proliferation just fine?

Now I'm more curious.

We/I do some hardware (and network) validation with products ahead of product launch (with and for manufacturers) - So far, when talking signal (good with solid speeds) where it took AP's (1 or 2) on each of 3 floors, 1 WiFi 6 is providing better coverage (a lot better latency) - I'm actually going to take 1 of these WiFi 6 (Router vs the AP's testing now) home tonight simply to see the impact in home environment (we have 3 story town home with 1/2 basement). The Router, just did test with it on WiFi 2.5 stories up which includes through 1 fire door, stairs, 3 rooms, on gig internet the average performance was 8-9 ms and each test topped at 942mb (max or wall the internal router seems to be hitting). This not even enterprise grade product/brand either (one brands many home users buy today) so I'm pretty impressed so far.

 

[Grimlakin]

We/I do some hardware (and network) validation with products ahead of product launch (with and for manufacturers) - So far, when talking signal (good with solid speeds) where it took AP's (1 or 2) on each of 3 floors, 1 WiFi 6 is providing better coverage (a lot better latency) - I'm actually going to take 1 of these WiFi 6 (Router vs the AP's testing now) home tonight simply to see the impact in home environment (we have 3 story town home with 1/2 basement). The Router, just did test with it on WiFi 2.5 stories up which includes through 1 fire door, stairs, 3 rooms, on gig internet the average performance was 8-9 ms and each test topped at 942mb (max or wall the internal router seems to be hitting). This not even enterprise grade product/brand either (one brands many home users buy today) so I'm pretty impressed so far.

That is nice. Makes me want to upgrade my router at home.

 

[Brian_B]

That is nice. Makes me want to upgrade my router at home.

I probably will when I can get a replacement ubiquiti for a decent price. My current AC-LR is doing adequately, although I have a horrible ISP and I think even 802.11 B would be enough for that.