Question Questions about 3rd party PC antennas and replacing antenna that comes with wifi motherboard

dalsia

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May 15, 2022
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I'm in the process of upgrading my PC after many years, and am looking to purchase the ASUS ROG Strix Z690-I motherboard, which comes with built-in WiFi, including an ASUS antenna (here is the user manual). For this build I wanted to go with a 3rd party antenna, as the one that ASUS includes is not aesthetically appealing to me. However, I have no experience with using 3rd party antennas, so I have a few questions:
  1. My motherboard states that 2.4/5/6GHz frequencies are supported. Does my 3rd party antenna need to match all of these? I can't seem to find an antenna that supports 6GHz. How do antennas that support 5.8GHz fit into this?
  2. I'm not sure what the dBi of the ASUS antenna is, and am concerned that a 3rd party antenna would have a much lower dBi compared to the included antenna.
  3. What antennas would you recommend? I would prefer a white antenna that connects directly to my case (not wired), but have also seen several builds on YouTube over the years (I don't recall the specific videos) that used a smaller blue and white antenna (I think) that seems to be popular. I have no idea what this antenna is, and can't seem to find it on Newegg or Amazon.
I very much appreciate any help you may be able to offer. Thank you!
 
You have to realize it is not just 1 frequency it is a large range, For example the 5ghz band actually has 2 major blocks allowed in most countries at about 5.2 and the other about 5.8.

The antenna you are looking at are pretty much just a piece of wire that is some multiple of the length of 1 wave of a frequency. Microwave frequencies are so small it would be to costly to manufacture exact length antenna for a consumer market even if it was just 1 frequency.

In general any antenna that is designed for wifi will work on 6g. It works on 2.4 also because the frequency is almost exactly 1/2 of the 5g band.

All that said the asus antenna are actually what the best antenna are going to look like ignoring things like color. What is key is the wires going to the antenna allow you to move the antenna away from the computer case that blocks huge amounts of signal. Even if you were to find some "better?" antenna if connect them directly to the back of the computer you are going to block signal.

One thing to note is wifi transmission power is regulated by the government. Very technically you are not allowed to legally replace the antenna with any third party antenna unless you can prove it does not exceed the standards. This is one of those you can buy and own third party antenna you just are not really allowed to use them.

Most manufactures are using antenna that are optimized for the equipment you are using. Something like a desktop generally has antenna large enough to put out near the legal power maximum. This is not the case for portable equipment like tablets and phones since small size is more important than wifi performance.

If you had ask me which antenna I would recommend it would be something that looks like asus, ie something that has short wires so you can put the antenna where it gets better signals. I seem to be different that a lot of people. I do not care what color or led my case uses I only care about say how much airflow there is.
I would suspect someone makes colored antenna. I suspect all will work as long as it has the correct connector type.
 
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