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Question why do people want wifi on their motherboard

E

etrin

Senior member
whats the big deal of having wifi on a motherboad of a home computer?
I just don't get it....use a cable and have a lot better setup.
 
? Not everyone has ethernet wall jacks, or wants wires laying around.

That said, wired is nearly always the way to go, with devices like PCs and HDTVs that have fixed locations.

Edit: Argueably, a better feature for mobos is 2.5GbE, rather than wifi.
 
VirtualLarry said:
? Not everyone has ethernet wall jacks, or wants wires laying around.

That said, wired is nearly always the way to go, with devices like PCs and HDTVs that have fixed locations.

Edit: Argueably, a better feature for mobos is 2.5GbE, rather than wifi.
Click to expand...

Also, it seems like 99% of the time you get bt with the wifi and if you have/want bt accessories it's just a part of the PC.

Also, getting a good adapter can be expensive and then takes up a slot. Integrated (or having a m2 slot available for it) is a lot cleaner. And given how people are willing to invest in cable management, that is a clear perk too.
 
The only internet I have available is tethering thru my phone and Ipads. Having the built in wifi is better than having to do any add-on cards or such.
 
VirtualLarry said:
? Not everyone has ethernet wall jacks, or wants wires laying around.

That said, wired is nearly always the way to go, with devices like PCs and HDTVs that have fixed locations.

Edit: Argueably, a better feature for mobos is 2.5GbE, rather than wifi.
Click to expand...
Yup this is why I recently added a wifi card to my Z170 system. I didn't want wires stretching across the floor even though I do have an ethernet wall jack in the room. Also like Blckgrffn noted it also has BT connectivity which my Z170 board doesn't have.
 
WiFi built into the mother board usually comes with a high quality low latency blue tooth implementation.

In my personal experience, the usb adapters for bluetooth on Amazon are a massive headache. They frequently do not support better audio codecs, awful latency, awful drivers, and need to be unplugged/replugged in periodically.

The built into the mother board is a better experience with Bluetooth. Keyboards, audio, mice, filesharing. It is just better all around.
 
Wifi is convenient if you're taking your gaming PC to someone else's place (do teenagers do that?), if you're temporarily moving it to the living room to play arcade games on the big screen with your kids (my use case), or if you plan to pass your computer to a family member down the road (another use case for me).
I also think the added cost of built-in wifi (usually around $20) is so low that many people just take it "just in case".
 
Bobsy said:
Wifi is convenient if you're taking your gaming PC to someone else's place (do teenagers do that?), if you're temporarily moving it to the living room to play arcade games on the big screen with your kids (my use case), or if you plan to pass your computer to a family member down the road (another use case for me).
I also think the added cost of built-in wifi (usually around $20) is so low that many people just take it "just in case".
Click to expand...
All true, although if you are a "Hardcore gamer" and / or "Streamer", then you're going to want to hook it up wired, for both latency and consistent performance.

There's another factor too, BlueTooth. Many PCI-E and some USB wifi adapters have BlueTooth built-in as well. BT Speakers can be effective and useful, you can put the speakers across the room from the PC (my use case).
 
Don't forget, there are some who want it and others that get it only because it is on the board that has other features they want.
 
I bought a Motherboard with a WiFi slot and a Intel AX200 but never installed it, it was only for if I was forced to switch to Mobile WiFi. I do buy WiFi enabled boards for friends/family as it gives them the flexibility to connect how they want to.
 
I wish everyone using wifi for the LAN connectivity well as I wardrive yur neighborhoods seeing what p0rn you got on them rigs. 😛
 
Potential extra resale value? I don't need it, but the next potential buyer might. It could be a necessity for the next owner.
 
UsandThem said:
I'll take "Because they want to use wifi" for $200, Alex. 😛
Click to expand...

the problem is wifi standards change so much, the existing wifi on your board isn't the recient.
Im with larry on this tho, id rather have a faster nic, 2.5g/5g/10g and ditch the wifi as you can just get a 1x pci-e card for that with large high gain external antena's and not some dinky magnetic rabbit ear one. Also Wifi-6 is amazing if you have the structure for it, and im sure not many boards come out of the box with Wifi-6.
 
aigomorla said:
the problem is wifi standards change so much, the existing wifi on your board isn't the recient.
Im with larry on this tho, id rather have a faster nic, 2.5g/5g/10g and ditch the wifi as you can just get a 1x pci-e card for that with large high gain external antena's and not some dinky magnetic rabbit ear one. Also Wifi-6 is amazing if you have the structure for it, and im sure not many boards come out of the box with Wifi-6.
Click to expand...

Many of the boards have the built-in WiFi in the same m2 PCIe slot like laptops. Makes swapping out for the latest WiFi 6 really cheap and keeps the case clean.

If I was being really picky, I think that is really my preference. The most recent AsRock board I bough has the slot but it is empty. This seems like a good compromise since I didn’t need WiFi or bt out of the box.
 
aigomorla said:
the problem is wifi standards change so much, the existing wifi on your board isn't the recient.
Click to expand...

I disagree.

801.11n came out in 2009, 11 years ago. It is supported by nearly everything. Even with brand new routers, 99/100 will support 801.11n.

I challenge you to find a single router on this page that does not support 801.11n:

I went looking, and if you pop the specification sheet open, nearly all of them on that page also support 802.11g, released in 2003.
 
My motherboard came with 802.11ac https://www.anandtech.com/show/8249/asus-z97-pro-wifi-ac-review.

It isn't needed most of the time, but it has saved my butt more than once, and it makes it really easy to pair devices to my PC via Bluetooth or Wifi. I have 2 ISP's and it performs the same as my USB to Ethernet adapter. Same thing with my CPU's iGPU, not needed 99% of the time, but without it, I would have been in trouble. My main ISP wifi router is still on 802.11ac as well. I don't see a need to upgrade yet.

The main problem is driver support. I am at Asus' mercy here. No official Windows 10 support. Without using the Windows 8.1 driver, my PC will blue screen in Windows 10 unless I disable wifi in BIOS.
 
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