Why wifi on ATX mobos?

IdiotInCharge said:
That's got to be an AMD thing. I haven't seen an Intel board without Wifi when looking at the middle tiers on up in at least five years. Sometimes I use it (a little), sometimes a lot, sometimes I disable it in the BIOS, but it's been ever-present to the point that I didn't think boards came without it!
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I usually get annoyed when boards come with WiFi. Luckily on some of them you can yank out the wifi module.
 
I don't mind having the wifi. I played with using one of my computers as a wifi access point, but I didn't really see the point...for my use/setup.

Now, when it has a wifi module included, I disable it in the BIOS. I figure that if I need it, at least it's there. (If I give the computer to someone else, maybe they could use it?)

Agree that I'd rather save the $ on a purchase and not have it...but I don't see the savings being more than a few dollars.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Interesting. Last time I played with MoCa adapters it was because that was what Verizon FiOS used when they installed in most homes.

I bought a couple of adapters to augment the FiOS system. It worked pretty well, but at the time (2009?) MoCa was only at the 1.1 revision , so max speeds were 175 mbit/s.

I did t realize MoCa had beenbfirther developed since then. Apparently the 2.0 revision went up to a gigabit, and the 2.5 revision supports 2.5 gigabit.

That can be quite nice, especially if you already have ore-routed coax cabling to every room, like a lot of oder homes do.

I'm not replacing my 10-gig fiber any time soon, but it is a nice tool to have in my arsenal of I ever need it.
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Still on FiOS, but Frontier now, out in TX. I currently have Actiontec units that are bulletproof. I can get 600mbps on 2.0 units. I have a buddy using the motorola bonded 2.0 units getting 1Gbps consistantly.

Like you said, as long as you have decent coax, and as important, all terminating to the same good splitter, MoCA is amazing.
 
Paying the $20 to have WiFi 6 already on the board versus having to acquire a USB or pcie dongle at the same cost when all other board features compared to the non-wifi version of the same board? It's really a no brainer.
 
I would agree that I don't really want to give up board real estate for something I likely won't use, not to mention that even if I did use it I am locked in to a soon to be outdated standard and end up having to eventually get an adapter anyway. Also on-board stuff can often be crap quality. That said, there is usually more than enough room on the board for everything, and if i like everything else about the board then why should I care about it having wireless.
The bigger question to me is why does everything need to have LED lighting?
 
ThatITGuy said:
No.
If you are staring at your case instead of the monitor, you are using your computer wrong. Also, the lights are distracting in dark rooms when you are trying to either sleep, or watch movies. My focus is on min/maxing silence vs cooling.
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I have never seen a board with RGB lighting where the lighting couldn't be turned off in bios. Problem solved.

That being said, I have seen a board where the wifi couldn't be disabled in bios and that was much more concerning. Then again, you can always pull the wifi card.
 
RGB doesn't have to mean rainbow strobes... it can be used to add a tasteful accent, assuming it is implemented well.

kirbyrj said:
That being said, I have seen a board where the wifi couldn't be disabled in bios and that was much more concerning.
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I'd definitely have issues with that.

kirbyrj said:
Then again, you can always pull the wifi card.
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I know they're in there somewhere under the rear shroud... but I've never seen them so accessible as to be willing to just 'pull' one out. Perhaps I need to look harder.
 
kirbyrj said:
I have never seen a board with RGB lighting where the lighting couldn't be turned off in bios. Problem solved.

That being said, I have seen a board where the wifi couldn't be disabled in bios and that was much more concerning. Then again, you can always pull the wifi card.
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On most of them, yes. I have seen boards where it was soldered in place though.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
I know they're in there somewhere under the rear shroud... but I've never seen them so accessible as to be willing to just 'pull' one out. Perhaps I need to look harder.
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On my Asrock ASRock H270M-ITX/ac I used for my pfsSense router build the WiFi adapter was in an encased metal module along the I/O shield. It was just a matter of loosening one screw and pulling the whole thing up to remove it.

See before and after below:

upload_2019-11-15_13-23-21.png
 
IdiotInCharge said:
I know they're in there somewhere under the rear shroud... but I've never seen them so accessible as to be willing to just 'pull' one out. Perhaps I need to look harder.
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Most of the more recent boards I've seen have modules like Zarathustra showed or a regular m.2 card (often hidden under a shroud like you pointed out). I had an EVGA Z370 board that had the wifi card accessible near the video card x16 slot without any effort.

Honestly, I don't know why you'd want all that onboard (Wifi especially) when you have all those PCIe slots available on an ATX board. What's the point of having all that expansion if you aren't going to use any of it? Much easier to "upgrade" by throwing in a different card. A lot of Wifi PCIe cards are just m.2 adapters for Wifi with antenna leads. If you aren't going to use the expansion, why not go with a smaller motherboard?
 
kirbyrj said:
If you aren't going to use the expansion, why not go with a smaller motherboard?
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Honestly, for ATX it's more about the space for cooling vs. mATX and smaller. You could get away with mATX if the board selection wasn't more limited, and then that depends on what you're trying to do.

kirbyrj said:
Honestly, I don't know why you'd want all that onboard (Wifi especially) when you have all those PCIe slots available on an ATX board.
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Biggest reason personally? The WiFi solutions shipped with motherboards are almost always decent Intel adapters with good drivers and performance, and since they're PCIe, they don't take up a USB port- and USB adapters almost never come with Intel parts.

Now, as to using slots, if it's not an HEDT board, they're usually spoken for... :)
 
I agree. I think just about every board I've used lately had an Intel Wifi adapter, and I've never had a problem with them. Now that I think about it. They also have bluetooth on the same adapter. I'd use bluetooth onboard before I used Wifi, but where I have my computer already has an ethernet run, so I haven't needed wifi in a while.

A comparable PCIe card is around $25-30 for a cheap one. Ideally, I'd like to save $25-30 off the cost of the motherboard, but no worries.

In my case, I have an extra slot or two I could throw in a PCIe adapter if I needed to on my ATX board. In an ideal world though, I'd love for more manufacturers to take mATX more seriously, but it seems to be a niche market (which is strange considering how many OEMs use mATX).
 
I prefer wired - every time. That said I now rent so wall surgery isn't an option and the main cable terminus isn't anywhere near where my desktop is or would ever be. I'm using an older WD powerline solution right now (and it's meeting all of my needs) but the next system I build will most likely have on-board WiFi. All things considered I'd rather have hard-wired ethernet, like back in my house, but it's just not in the cards right now - so I appreciate a quality on-board WiFi solution becoming semi-standard on a lot of the mobo's I'd consider.
 
Wifi is just a nice option to have. Hard wires are superior obviously. But the real winner is because bluetooth is built in as well, you can attach wireless controllers and headphones other bluetooth devices to your PC with no problem now with this new motherboard featureset.
 
vjhawk said:
Wifi is just a nice option to have. Hard wires are superior obviously. But the real winner is because bluetooth is built in as well, you can attach wireless controllers and headphones other bluetooth devices to your PC with no problem now with this new motherboard featureset.
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Why would you ever want anything bluetooth, especially on a desktop?
 
Bluetooth/desktop: one of my "desktops" is a HTPC. It sits 14 feet away, on the shelf with other electronics. A wireless mouse and keyboard are needed. Often, they use bluetooth.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Why would you ever want anything bluetooth, especially on a desktop?
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Bluetooth 'works', but I do prefer the more proprietary dongles provided by most wireless peripheral vendors that do a better job of ensuring bandwidth allocation and minimal latency if one must go wireless on the desktop.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Ethernet hardlines in houses are a thing of the past, everyone wants wifi for everything these days, which is why a lot of boards either come with it or have some dedicated slot for it.

It's a whole lot easier to setup a home wifi network than to retrofit RJ45 jacks. I did the latter for my house and it's a gigantic PITA, a couple of jacks took up to 5 hours to install by myself. I can't imagine how difficult it would be on multi-story houses, you'd have to cut holes in the walls and ceilings.

You can go the easy way with powerline ethernet adapters but those can be pretty expensive and are generally limited on the number you can have in the same network group.
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I run copper and fiber all through my house. Those that use wifi exclusively never would have hardwired to begin with.
 
tangoseal said:
I run copper and fiber all through my house. Those that use wifi exclusively never would have hardwired to begin with.
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Hardcore.. I would love to do this but it's not cheap. PowerLine Ethernet still works better than WiFi anyways, so I'm using that on remote devices.
 
For my desktops I hard wire them but they do have wireless. One great advantage is that when Comcast takes a crap I can load up the hotspot on my phone and keep on trucking.
 
Just make sure the incoming Internet drop is where your primary desktop / router is. Everything else should break out from there and you are good. Let the kids and wife deal with wireless.

: D
 
Mega6 said:
Hardcore.. I would love to do this but it's not cheap. PowerLine Ethernet still works better than WiFi anyways, so I'm using that on remote devices.
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You can get a thousand foot roll of Cat5e for less than $100 and the wall plates and hardware for less than $50 depending on how many outlets you want. The real cost is the labor of retrofitting it.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
You can get a thousand foot roll of Cat5e for less than $100 and the wall plates and hardware for less than $50 depending on how many outlets you want. The real cost is the labor of retrofitting it.
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Agreed.


If you have the wherewithall to do it yourself it is dirt cheap.

While very easy to do before the walls are finished, it is difficult work to retrofit. installing the boxes and faceplates is simple enough, but getting the cabling through the beams inside the walls is a major pain in the ass.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Agreed.


If you have the wherewithall to do it yourself it is dirt cheap.

While very easy to do before the walls are finished, it is difficult work to retrofit. installing the boxes and faceplates is simple enough, but getting the cabling through the beams inside the walls is a major pain in the ass.
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Walls are easy if they're not an outside wall. Use a bellhanger bit with a fish tape to go down the wall from the top plate. The hard part is being in an attic that's 150 degrees.
 
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