I just bought and installed a Gigabyte z170 Gaming 7 Motherboard for an upgrade to my rig. I didn't notice immediately, but I was wondering why my 2.4GHz wifi band was shitty, even when close to the router.
I have fiber to the home and AT&T's stock router has been fine. In order to troubleshoot, I tried turning off the radios on the stock router and running my Netgear R6250 router to see if it's signal would be stronger. (Note: I started making these changes AFTER the purchase of my new motherboard)
Both the stock router and the Netgear have crazy interference and slow speeds in the current configuration.
The PC and the router(s) are not right next to each other, but in the same room.
FYI - Home is ranch style, all 1 floor, built in the 60's (but no lead paint), access point is at one end of the house (office).
Today I came across this article (which is apparently old) Intel White Paper
Have you tried cycling all the channels for 2.4Ghz?
Use the WiFi Analyzer (in beep mode) to check your coverage and see where it is dropping off.
My best answer is to use a nice PCI or USB external Wi-Fi card. Troubleshooting interference from motherboard components may help fix the issue, but an external card would kill two bird with one stone, since it would also improve your overall speed as well as fixing this attenuation problem.
On my mac laptop I've been using for mobile diagnostics of various rooms in the house, I've been using the Wireless Diagnostics tool not too dissimilar from this article's depiction...
I have neighbors on either side of my house, but there is a good 30-40 ft between the homes. I can pick up on their weaker signals and see what channel they are on. However, when I manually select a channel that is not in use, I all of sudden see noise on the frequency. I've tried 1-11 on 2.4GHz band. Shitty on all of them.
I'll try more when I get home and use the tool you linked to cross reference my previous findings.
Thanks for the link. (EDIT: ...RIP... I have an iPhone and iStruggle with it)
I think I'm going to start by unplugging what I have plugged into the USB 3.x port on the mobo and see if that makes a difference... then depending on that I'll test performance with the power unplugged on the rig. If it's the motherboard, I'm breaking out the tin foil I use for lining my hats and use it on this port.
Do you have any other microwave stuff in your home ? (security sensor, heating control, door bell ) also do you or any other house members have an xbox360 running wifi ?
shitty usb 3.0 hubs and such CAN cause interference, i ended up wrapping it in tinfoil. the motherboard usb3.0 should be fine though, i dunno. the AC band should be less problematic for interference, however '
No 360's hooked up, microwave is in the kitchen (literally on the opposite side of the house), we have a door bell but its old as hell. We use a Nest for AC/heating control.
Anyone know if the Netgear R6250's USB 3.0 port is shielded?
Thanks I've tried to mitigate any perceived issues with USB 3.0 devices nearby (Xbox One external 1TB Matsunichi HD, my PC's mobo mentioned in the post)
It could be the USB 3.0 port on the Netgear R6250 I was testing out, which had been in use for several years at my parent's house.
When testing, I was not using any USB 3.0 device actively, but several were attached to devices that were off but still connected to power.
The 3.0 ports on my z170 are all servicing 2.0 devices.
Thanks for the post and I'll work through it. I'm glad im not the only one to want to whip out the tin foil.