how come motherboards don't come with built-in wireless?

[her34]

over the years they integrated sound and ethernet and sometimes graphics, but i've never seen wireless. seems odd especially since wifi is so common now

 

[ciproxr]

thats a great question, have no idea why...

 

[Jiggz]

Probably because desktop mobo are were designed to be mobile. As you can see, the mobo for laptop integrates wireless nics. This is because it is designed to be mobile. With fierce competition on pricing and constant updates, desktop mobo makers used the least amount of components in the mobo to keep in business.

 

[Yreka]

They are starting to. There is a version of the Asus A8N32-SLI that comes with built in wireless, I would suspect there are others already and more not far behind.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, When the current batch of MBs were designed WIFI probably was not in existence or was not yet popular. Soon we will probably see what you propose. Jim

 

[jough]

Even machines that weren't designed to be mobile can make use of a wireless NIC - it beats stringing wire around the house to meet each PC.

It's a good question - I expect it'll be a matter of time before WiFi becomes common on at least higher-end motherboards.

In the meantime, if you don't have any free PCI slots there is always the possibility of using a USB WiFi NIC.

The first time I built a PC (it was a screamingly fast Pentium 200Mhz with MMX! - all the way back in the distant past of 1997) the motherboard didn't have built-in anything really - I had to buy a separate video and sound card, an external modem (with K56 Flex "highspeed"), and a network adapter (10baseT because the 100baseT cards were too expensive). I think the board had a couple of PCI slots, but mostly it had ISA.

Man, it ran Windows 95SE SO FAST. It was a monster at the time.

Now my processor is running at 11x the clock speed/frequency, and the actual performance is many times more than that.

Heck, even the "new" AGP slot is on its way out now. It's hard to find new motherboards that don't have PCI-Express for video.

So it's just a matter of time before WiFi becomes standard on motherboards. And also before modems no longer come standard (my new MSI mATX board does NOT come with a modem built-in - but I had to check just now before I realised that!).

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Jiggz
Probably because desktop mobo are were designed to be mobile. As you can see, the mobo for laptop integrates wireless nics. This is because it is designed to be mobile. With fierce competition on pricing and constant updates, desktop mobo makers used the least amount of components in the mobo to keep in business.

Most laptop mobos still don't integrate the wireless card, just wireless cards now come standard with laptops.

Anyhow, I'd say that mobo makers don't integrate wireless due to increased interference and cost. Even still, Asus has been including wireless in its mobos for several years now, just only on their most expensive mobos. (personally, I think that integrated video, at the very least 2d, should be available on every mobo as well)

 

[Elcs]

Integrating Wireless into Desktop Motherboards wouldnt be very efficient.

Wireless standards can change, meaning people may have to by a new motherboard when upgrading a wireless network rather than just a card.

Motherboards go up in price a little, driver problems and manipulation of settings problems.

Motherboard power, traces and other issues?

Id say just leave the Wireless gear to the Wireless gear makers and the Motherboards to the Motherboard manufacturers.

Anyone comparing this to NIC's, a 1000Mbit cards are backwards compatible (I believe) with 10/100MBit networks which have been around donkeys years. How long have wireless standards been around and what about backwards compatibilty now and in the future?

 

[TankGuys]

Originally posted by: Yreka
They are starting to. There is a version of the Asus A8N32-SLI that comes with built in wireless, I would suspect there are others already and more not far behind.

Yep, there's a fair number of Asus boards that do (mainly Intel based boards). I think there just isn't much demand for them.... most people who have a desktop tend to use a wired LAN for the speed.

 

[Matthias99]

Even machines that weren't designed to be mobile can make use of a wireless NIC - it beats stringing wire around the house to meet each PC.

802.11b is a good order of magnitude slower than 100Mbps wired networking, and even 802.11a/g aren't that much better (the bandwidth is split for upload/download and you have a lot more collisions/resends, plus the hardware is more expensive). For anything more intensive than email and websurfing, you really want a wired connection. MIMO wireless is faster, but too expensive to realistically bundle with motherboards unless you charge a lot more for the board, and the standards are still in flux. Ethernet isn't going anywhere, but wireless stuff is still changing. If you build in 802.11b, someone who wants an 802.11g or MIMO network has to find another solution anyway. If you build in 802.11a/b/g or MIMO, you're adding significant extra cost for people who don't want wireless at all, and they could still be out of popular use in a few years.

If you make two versions of your board (one with and one without wireless), that's a lot of extra manufacturing and design cost for what would likely be a niche product. ASUS made about the only reasonable compromise, which is having it be an add-in daughtercard -- but at that point, why not just get a PCI wireless NIC?

 

[essasin]

I wouldnt want a wireless NIC on my mobo. Its just another thing to take up space, generate heat and go wrong when ocing.