Question Recommendation for USB Adapter (Gaming)

[Goobis]

Hello,

So I recently built a mini ITX with the following parts listed down below, and when I tried to play Overwatch, I noticed that within a session of gaming lag would happen once, where everyone else would freeze and I can still run around for a split second, then everything would just rubber band and I would die from it. It doesn't happen too often but at least once per session. During that lag I can see that my latency goes from 40ms to 100ms then back down to 80 then 40ms within a split second. I am guessing that my onboard wifi has signal issues? I was just wondering if there are USB Wifi adapter alternatives for gaming because my Mini ITX only has one PCI-E slot and I cant install a PCI-E Wifi Adapter into it. I want something reliable to replace my onboard wifi and I have seen many alternatives but not sure what's a safe choice. I was eyeing the Asus USB-AC68 Dual Band AC1900 Wireless USB adapter and the Netgear A6210 High Gain Wifi USB Adapter-AC1200 802.11ac. any opinions would be greatly appreciated.



Mini ITX Part List

Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix B450-I mITX
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700
RAM: G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3600Mhz
GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Ventus 8GB
SSD: Samsung 250GB 970 EVO Plus m.s NVMe
HDD: Seagate IronWolf Nas HDD 3.5" 2TB 7200RPM
Power: eVGA 220-G2-0750-XR 750W G2 80+ Gold Full Modular
Case: Thermaltake Mini ITX Core V1
Monitor: MSI Optix 27" MPG27CQ

Cheers

 

[failboat]

how far away from the wifi are you? did it used to work in that same spot on another build?
weak wifi won't always give you latency because the throughput is very small it won't buffer. you might get a lot of re-transmissions but wouldn't increase your ping. it can make you jump around like that.

if you have another pc to test from that can be wired run iperf3 and it will show you the wireless speed and retransmissions. inside windows you should be able to see your connection strength if you can look that up post it.

this has a chart of signal strength. -30 to -70 dBm is the range you want to be in. if you're in that now changing out your wifi might not help.
https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/wifi-signal-strength-basics.html

wired is the best solution for gaming. if you're going to be at your location for a long time it's worth spending for it.

 

[bill001g]

The cheapest "fix" to try is to buy some of the antenna extenders. They have short cables that let you extend your antenna to the top of the case. The case blocks a lot of signal depending on where the wifi signal is coming from.

A different nic card will not likely fix your problem. USB cards are pain to find good ones because most as designed for the portable market where small size and low battery drain are important. Both reduce the signal levels. Most USB units that are designed for desktops have usb cables already attached....usb like the antenna on your internal card do not like to be near the back of the machine.

I would agree try to get ethernet if there is any possibility even if it is a pain. Once it is in you never worry about it again.

You could also consider powerline units they work well in most houses. Buy the newer AV2 based ones not the av200 or av500.

 

[Goobis]

im about 2-3m away from the router as it is just in my housemate's room. I have another computer (full tower) running a PCI-E wifi card which is even further away from the router and it has no issues at all. The thing about my new pc now is that I cant install any PCI-E wifi cards due to only having 1 slot that is taken by my graphics card. And the antenna that came with my B450-I motherboard can extend to my desk as it comes with a cabled antenna that can be re positioned. None of our computers in the house are wired unfortunately :c

I also just downloaded that inSSIDer Plus program and I see that my 5Ghz wifi is sitting at -48 dBm

The AV2 powerline units seems like a great solution. I checked out the D-Link DHP-P701AV and it looks promising. Do they have any downside to it? Like bad weather etc.

 

[bill001g]

If you mean weather causes issues on your electrical wiring, to a point. Unfortunately you can not plug powerline units into a ups so if the power goes out they are dead. They reboot extremely fast so a small blink in the power will not have much impact.

They also can not be plugged into most surge suppressors but most have small internal surge suppressors but nothing will protect against something like a lightning strike.

The main issue with powerline is they do not work in every house. They are dependent on the electrical wiring but the newer units work a lot better. What is strange is there are certain brands of arc fault breakers that very new houses are required to have. These seem to block powerline. It is unclear which ones since most brands have no issues. Then again houses that were built in the last couple years generally have ethernet cabling to every room.

 

[failboat]

-48dBm is more than enough. if your throughput is lacking you might have some old gen wifi. AC1900 is plenty for your card most likely.

what router do you have and how fast is your ISP plan / what do you get with speedtest?

 

[digitalgriffin]

You have an intel chipset which is among the best wifi wise.

Using 2 to these might be on order:
https://www.newegg.com/premiertek-mp-3m-cable/p/N82E16833993094

Put them on top of your desk away from noisy RF interfering objects like metal surfaces, transformers or microwaves.

Also go into your adapter properties and see if you can set power mode to "High"

 

[Goobis]

im using the provided router from my ISP (Telstra) Smart Modem Gen2. And im on a 100 nbn plan in Australia, Brisbane. I get about 93 down and 32 up on speedtest .

Also, how do I set the power mode to High on my adapter properties?

 

[digitalgriffin]

im using the provided router from my ISP (Telstra) Smart Modem Gen2. And im on a 100 nbn plan in Australia, Brisbane. I get about 93 down and 32 up on speedtest .

Also, how do I set the power mode to High on my adapter properties?

10:1 it's your isp provided wifi router that's the weak link.

Your pings could also be due to channel pinging. This is where an nic goes out and scans all the frequencies to see which ssids are out there. This of course means your nic cannot handle traffic to your router while it does so.

Turning it off works for some people

https://superuser.com/questions/881880/turn-off-wi-fi-scanning-on-windows-8

 

[failboat]

Seems like your wifi strength is fine. It might be congestion from utilizing your bandwidth.
You can test by buying a really long ethernet cable or moving your pc.

iperf3 is a good way to check if you get a lot of retransmissions or low throughput.