[SOLVED] Just bought a new motherboard, but the WiFi connection is trash ?

[Andras0]

So I just bought a new pc, but I noticed that my wifi connection was drastically reduced from what it was on my previous laptop. The motherboard is an MSI MAG Z690 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 and has a couple antennas, so I was wondering if that could be the cause? My modem is only ~3m away behind a single wall but in a position where the antennas can't point directly. Even though I would want to avoid it, should I opt for a long ethernet cable to get a better connection? Do I have to mess with the properties settings in device manager? Please, if anybody knows how to just get my great connection back I would really appreciate it. Right now I can't even download a game without everything falling apart.

 

[drivinfast247]

Did you connect the antenna?

 

[Andras0]

Did you connect the antenna?

Yes.

 

[dwd999]

So I just bought a new pc, but I noticed that my wifi connection was drastically reduced from what it was on my previous laptop. The motherboard is an MSI MAG Z690 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 and has a couple antennas, so I was wondering if that could be the cause? My modem is only ~3m away behind a single wall but in a position where the antennas can't point directly. Even though I would want to avoid it, should I opt for a long ethernet cable to get a better connection? Do I have to mess with the properties settings in device manager? Please, if anybody knows how to just get my great connection back I would really appreciate it. Right now I can't even download a game without everything falling apart.

Difficult to say without seeing any pictures of the antennas. I know that last year when I got an ASUS Z590 Strix-E motherboard, the antenna for that was really bad since they went for form over function. In my case I went back to using an old TP-Link 9E pcie card which had better antennas. And now I have a TP-Link TX3000E which has really fantastic even stronger antennas. But in your case if you can use an ethernet cable you should most certainly do that since you'll never get wifi speeds and reliability anywhere near that. A small hole in the wall is a small price to pay for the best internet service you can get.

 

[Andras0]

Difficult to say without seeing any pictures of the antennas. I know that last year when I got an ASUS Z590 Strix-E motherboard, the antenna for that was really bad since they went for form over function. In my case I went back to using an old TP-Link 9E pcie card which had better antennas. And now I have a TP-Link TX3000E which has really fantastic even stronger antennas. But in your case if you can use an ethernet cable you should most certainly do that since you'll never get wifi speeds and reliability anywhere near that. A small hole in the wall is a small price to pay for the best internet service you can get.

The antennas are clearly not great, and don't really support themselves correctly and fall easily to the side. I could quickly get a TP-Link TX3000E, so I would love to know how are your speeds? Do you need to point the antennas at the modem or do they just work well out of the box? I appreciate the answer.

 

[dwd999]

The antennas are clearly not great, and don't really support themselves correctly and fall easily to the side. I could quickly get a TP-Link TX3000E, so I would love to know how are your speeds? Do you need to point the antennas at the modem or do they just work well out of the box? I appreciate the answer.

I just have my antennas pointing straight up with the base sitting on a corner of my desk. I am only using the 5 Ghz ac band right now because I'm waiting for TP-Link to release a 6E router. I get a reading of 650Mbs -52dBm from my router which is around 27 feet away; although there are walls there are also open doorways. Since the speed coming into my house tops out at around 300Mbs the extra speed is really for transferring files between my computers. I use the free wifi analyzer from the Microsoft Store. It helps a lot since with these antennas I sometimes can see over 100 wifi signals in my neighborhood and its very important for me to avoid the highly used channels where there may be a dozen (channel 157) or even 2 or 3 dozen (channel 6) users. But by all means if you can use ethernet cable, which will also be less expensive, you should definitely focus on ethernet.

 

[Xnihilo]

Try a wireless USB Wifi adapter. 10 bucks on amazon.