Is my wifi card busted? What should I look for in a new one?

icabero0225

So I recently had a PC built and I totally got the wrong motherboard, I got one with no wifi. I bought an external wifi chip. Any time I try to download something, and even sometimes when I don't, my wifi just shuts down on my PC. It does not affect the local network. I've found that limiting my bandwidth to 5 MB/s seems to help, but this isn't realistic long term.

Any ideas? What should I look for in a wifi card if I want to buy a new one? Ethernet isn't an option for me due to where my room is in relation to the network box.

Thank you!

EDIT: I just tried with a different wifi card, same issue. This one seems smoother, the itnernet dies but turns on again pretty rapidly. Still not ideal as I like to be in voice calls, stream, watch youtube, etc. Any ideas? It must be something with my computer if both cards die.

EDIT 2: Switch from 5ghz WiFi to the normal one (I think 2.4?) and it seems a lot smoother. Haven't had a wifi outage yet. Downloading a game on steam and another game from another source at the same time. The wifi is slower per second, but it stays up longer so this is the best option. Hope this helps anyone else having this issue. Bit bummed about not being able to use 5ghz but if anyone has a fix, lemme know!

JS_MC

Hi, @icabero0225 Welcome to the community!

That sounds pretty interesting. It sounds like this could be an issue with your router. It seems like the signal may not be strong enough to maintain a 5ghz frequency and it may be switching to 2.4ghz when this happens. We can test this in a couple of ways. I'd recommend checking your wifi network settings to see if you can isolate your device to remain on either the 2.4ghz or 5ghz frequency. Another option is to move closer to your router to see if it continues to disconnect or drop the signal.

2.4ghz is still a good network to use, and it typically has a farther signal range than 5ghz. However, 5ghz is typically able to carry a higher speed at a shorter distance. I hope that makes sense.

Let us know if this helps!