Question About PCI/-E Wireless Network Cards

[Yuhi]

My question is kind of two fold:
1. Can I theoretically expect better hardware reliability with a PCI card over a USB adapter?
2. Is it worth paying twice as much for a PCI card with a heat-sink over one that doesn't have one?
(Are the heat-sinks intended for set-ups with no airflow?)

Question no. 2 Is my main question I guess, I haven't managed to see much info concerning it with a google search.

Ok to add a little context about my thinking here I've only used USB adapters up to this point. Recently I've had some nightmares concerning a faulty adapter and I've had them fail in the past as well. Recently I was getting horrible crashes when a download speed got high (took me ages to track the problem back to a dodgy adapter as it would work for the most part and there were no events logged in windows etc).
So I thought, why not get one of those fancy looking PCI/internal card things instead. I've read around and people seem to have arguments for using either or in terms of PCI/USB.
Oh and in case it's relevant I've been looking at TP-Link and Asus cards on amazon, they do variants with and without heat-sinks.

Thanks

 

[Mankar Kameran]

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/should-i-get-a-usb-wireless-adapter-or-pci-wireless-adapter.196867/
That might shed some light.
Personally I would want it internal. Seems more reliable because you don't really worry about faulty cords or ports.

 

[boosted1g]

A USB dongle is going to be limited by the power/amps of the USB port so they will always be limited in their abilities.
A usb dongle also does not support larger antennas, especially in a 2 or 3 antenna MIMO configuration.

The problem though with the PCI-E card is that it puts the antenna behind the PC. If the antennas are against the wall closest to the wifi source then no biggie, if the PC is between the antennas and the wifi source then are noticeably decreased in performance.


At the end of the day, wifi is always going to have more latency and will have quickly declining speed numbers the farther away from the router when you start adding walls and obsacles. Instead of spending the money on a high dollar wifi card, instead you should just get a powerline network adapter. It uses the powerlines to send data and you plug one in near the router, connect it to the router with Ethernet, and then plug the other end near your PC and connect it to your PC via Ethernet. This will have a real world speed of 70-80mbps which is the absolute max you would achieve with wifi if you were 5 ft from the router with perfect line of sight.
http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4010KIT-Powerline-Adapter-Starter/dp/B00AWRUICG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437492129&sr=8-1&keywords=tp-link+av500