Amazon.com: Customer reviews: ASUS PCE-AC88 Dual-Band 4x4 AC3100 WiFi PCIe adapter with Heat Sink and External magnetic antenna base allows flexible antenna placement to maximize coverage

Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2018

Hands down the best wifi card Ive ever used. This card was a bit overkill for the current 250mbps broadband speed I pay for, but I wanted something that would be capable of the 1gb speeds I plan to upgrade to when I move into my new house.

Anyway so I needed a good wifi card because I recently sold my house and moved into an apartment temporarily until my new home is completed. Since I am in an apartment at the moment I had to downsize my network and I could snake cat6 cables through the walls terminating in every room like I did at my house. So for the most part all of my devices are now running wireless with the exception of my nas, but thats a different story. Since I never had to rely on a wireless connection for my PC's before my main PC had an old wireless N card in it that just was not going to cut it. So it was time for an upgrade. Did some research and narrowed it down between this card and the TP-link Archer T9E. Both of the cards are great and they are both capable of the gigabit speeds I plan on. Ultimately I chose the ASUS card for one reason. I liked that I could position the antennas where ever I wanted rather than them just being screwed to the PCIe card.

So far I have had the card for a month and its going strong. The Wifi card is running in my main desktop along with a linksys EA8300 router and a Netgear CM1000 cable modem. I have yet to have any problems with this card. Never have I lost a connection to the internet due to the wifi card and it has never failed to connect to the internet once the computer is booted. This card has actually exceeded my expectations as it is consistently allowing me 300mbps download and 12mbps upload which is more than the 250mbps upload I pay for. This in an apartment complex where there are 100's of wifi signals; a notoriously bad place for a wireless connection. So yeah Im quite happy. I still get really slow transfer speeds to my NAS, but that isnt the fault of the wireless card. That is just the nature of the game. Still it sucks transferring something like 30gb blu-ray movie to my nas wirelessly. It takes for ever. Im use to about 120mbps transfer speeds to and from my Nas, but with the wireless connection I am only getting a consistent 35mbps. Brutally slow, but its just something I have to deal with for now.

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Saul Wuech

Great product; Worth the price

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2021

Verified Purchase

First of all, the product was easy to install, it took me about 10 minutes from just trying to lock it in place inside my pc. Besides that, everything was pretty simple, but make sure you install the software onto your computer before you decide to unplug your wifi connection, you will have to install it somewhere else and transfer it through USB, so better off installing it before.
The device itself looks nice, it has a nice black finish and sits comfortably on my desk, and it's not that large so it hardly distracts me. The actual cable from the card to the antenna is quite short though, so make sure you have somewhere nice to place it that's close enough to your computer.
Performance: it performs great. Before I would be getting from 20-60 Mbps download and upload, sometimes even below that, but with the adapter on any given day, I am getting 400 Mbps download/upload and never lag. On the occasion I do lag, it has to do with my provider, not the adapter.

Is it worth your money, yes most definitely. If you need high speeds for whatever you're doing, get this one. It is incredibly easy to set up and will provide you with immense satisfaction.

Keynote: I've had this for about a month now, and nothing has gone wrong.

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Paul A.

Solved a huge latency issue

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2018

Verified Purchase

My gaming PC came with what I thought was a decent wireless card. Until I started having some really big issues with lag. The issues would come up during gaming and any type of streaming from my primary machine using Plex. Made no sense with how much I had invested in my home wifi. Running two UAP-AC-Pro's through CAT6 to a UniFi Switch 24, a Ubiquiti ERPoe-5 Edgerouter, and finally to fiber from my ISP. I would have continued to run CAT6 to the computer but it's location from my server room made that difficult to do and conceal the wire. And even so, it shouldn't matter with an AP capable of 1300 Mbps on 5GHz.

After some trouble shooting I realized it was the 5GHz band on my wireless card that was bad. So I decided to upgrade to this and I couldn't be happier. Performed even better than I expected. The magnetic base is pretty handy and makes concealing it easier if you want to stick it to your desk or some type of stand. My latency went from 25-30ms and lots of random lag spikes to 16ms and no more lag spikes. I realize 25-30ms is great and it was until I would lag (always during some sort of important objective in game) and would miss several seconds of action due to the spike. I would have settled for the lag spikes gone but lowering my ping and getting rid of the spikes made this a home run for me. I can't say this will 100% lower your ping as it depends on the game you're playing, where the server is located, and of course your ISP and the UP/DOWN speed they provide to you. But if your wireless card is giving you issues and you need an excuse to upgrade, you'll love this.

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Brian

BIG upgrade to WiFi!

Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2022

Verified Purchase

We had a TP-LINK AC1750 adapter in a desktop built a few years ago, and it had been struggling to maintain connectivity for the past year or so, even after we bought an external extension array for the antennae. I had just upgraded our wireless router from a Netgear N900 WNDR4500 to an ASUS AX6000 RT-AX88U, but that did nothing for the adapter in the older desktop. In fact, it may have just made things worse.
I was hesitant to buy the ASUS adapter, because that ASUS router is . . . a lot to handle, unless you're a network engineer. The setup and UI for the ASUS router isn't exactly user-friendly.
We first deleted the old WiFi adapter drivers by re-running the original driver setup application. Thankfully, this was an option, because we were unsure what to delete from within Windows Device Manager. After uninstaling the old driver, we uninstalled the old card.
Turns out that the ASUS wireless adapter is simple to install and use. The bracket needed to be tweaked (bent slightly at the top and bottom), allowing the card to better fit the PCI bus—this happens with other cards, as well. After physically installing the new card, we installed the drivers from the included CD. The offering online were confusing—we could not tell if they were drivers, utilities, or a combination of both, and there's no guidance available. After installing the drivers, we connected the antennae extension array and connected to the home WiFi through the widget in Windows Task Bar. All we had to do was remember the WiFi password!
There were no menus to navigate, no Byzantine questions to answer, no trouble to be had, anywhere. It just worked.
The new adapter is ridiculously fast, compared to the old one. This adapter can maintain connectivity via the 5G band, where the old one would regularly drop the signal. Online gaming isn't losing connectivity. Downloads are quite fast.
This is a great product. Online, there was mention of a utility that switched off a KRACK exploit vulnerability, but, as is normal for ASUS, there's no explanation of how to use the utility. As we experienced with our ASUS AX6000 RT-AX88U router, ASUS would benefit by integrating a more user-friendly interface between its products and its customers—at all points within the ASUS ecosystem.

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Bevan M

I'd like to give this a higher rating

Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2018

Verified Purchase

Thought I'd update that finally after over a year or so later the drivers seem to be playing nice. It automatically connects on boot and runs 5GHz fine.
Must be a windows fix as I have not updated the Asus driver since install.

I hope it continues.

Original Review: I'd like to give this a higher rating. Because when it works, it works well. It can definitely deliver the speeds you want.

Unfortunately, the 5GHz portion of this product isn't so good. And that's the radio i'm sure most people want to use. But read on first..

My system has an incredibly frustrating compatibility issue, where if i have dual monitors setup, it WILL NOT connect to 5Ghz. It can see it, and tries to connect but "Cannot connect to this network". If i disconnect the secondary screen, it will connect immediately and deliver the speed. I can then re-connect the secondary screen, and 75% of the time it will continue to work. The other 25% it will not deliver internet. And occasionally lock up the networking options.

After HOURS of research, it appears that this is a compatibility issue with Windows 10 and the ASUS drivers. No matter how many driver re-installs and updates i try, it does not fix this issue. ASUS customer support are next to useless. The advise removing the product, removing the drivers, re-fitting the product and re-installing drivers.

I wish i had returned this within the return period. But i was determined to figure it out. 3 months later and theres still no fix.

System specs are:
i7 6700k
Maximus VIII Hero
SLI EVGA 980ti
Ripjaws V 16gb memory.

I have tried HDMI cables, DVI-HDMI cables., different display outputs. Same problem everywhere.

If ANYONE can shed some light on this, i would greatly appreciate a reply! But by looking back at many reviews, i am not the only one that has issues.

Unfortunately i cannot try removing a GPU as it is a full custom watercooled setup. Sandwiching the wifi card in there is tricky enough.

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SteveJabz

Best of the Best!

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2017

Verified Purchase

Oh my...This thing is absolutely a beast. I bought this to replace WAP610N that was pretty old. I disconnected often when downloading files, and occasionally my Ethernet would just cut out. After ruling out my motherboard, it was time to replace the bridge that supplied 1000s of hours of gaming.

-Installing this was a breeze.
-Wasn't auto detected by windows 10, but that was fine with me, as I hate when Windows installs drivers.
-Downloaded the latest Driver from Asus's website (NOT THE CD, NEVER THE CD). And installed them. No bloatware interface or software, literally just the driver,

Now...I was NOT prepared for what happened once I looked for my network. I had full 5 bars on the 2.4ghz band and 3-4/5 on the 5Ghz band. I'm 350FT away from the router...I could not believe on the performance of this thing! Not only did it connect with 5 bars, but there was less lag when playing games AND increase my download speed from 2-3MBps to 5-6MBps.

The beam-forming worked like a charm, the more antennas I pointed at my router's direction, the stronger the signal got. I am 5 Bars on the 5ghz band 350FT AWAY FROM IT!

Contrary to what other reviews have said, this DOES support Windows 10.

I am extremely satisfied with this purchase and oh my...Yes, I definitely recommend this if you need range and performance.

Also, my router is the new ASUS ROG Rapture 5300. And Yes, I 1000% recommend that as well. Both of those paired together will give you the best wireless performance you have ever experienced.

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BoldTech

Awesome - When it works, but a fatal flaw

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2020

Verified Purchase

Like many others have stated, this card is absolutely awesome when it works. I was getting solid 1.2Gb connections to my Unifi DreamStation 15' away. Large file transfers to my home NAS were screaming fast. Unfortunately, like many others have reported the problem with the card is it will randomly just stop seeing any wifi networks, and only an adapter restart or PC reboot will make it work again.

I ordered this card even after reading the reviews. As an IT pro of almost 30 years, I just figured the previous users had isolated or one-off issues (or just didn't know what they were doing) and I thought I would try it for myself. However, after running this the past few weeks I can see there is indeed something wrong with these cards.

Mine ran great for about a week, no issues. Installed latest driver (from 2018) on a solid water-cooled high-end gaming rig. Excellent range and throughput, was gaming online with pings and latency as good as I was seeing on my wired network.

But then suddenly I was getting network disconnects out of nowhere. When it happened, the only thing that would bring the connection back was disable/re-enable the card, or a system reboot. Until then the card would happily show is was working properly in Device Manager, but no wifi networks would show as available. The second your restarted the adapter, then the wifi networks would suddenly appear and reconnect and all would be well. Until the next time it just decides to no longer see any wifi. =)

Sometimes it would run for days without issue, then it would do it 3-4 times in a 30 minute period. And it doesn't seem to be heat related at all. I also methodically tested all the adapter driver settings to see if I could narrow it down to a power or settings issue with the drivers, but no changes seemed to make a difference.

Alas, after troubleshooting for the past week, I'm sending it back and will continue to stay wired for now. It's too bad, as when the card works I have never used a wifi card as fast as this one. But I need to to work all the time, not just when it feels like it.

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Brian G Mclean Jr

Getting the most from Xfinity Gigabit Internet speeds!

Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

The decision to upgrade our basic internet package from a 200 speed to a full gig speed with Xfinity was, in a word, a nightmare. Suddenly, we were barely getting internet to any of our devices unless they were wired, including our computers, largely used for gaming. Xfinity/Comcast told us that the goal shouldn't be to expect high speeds on our computers, due to them being in the basement and plenty of wifi interference between them and the router, but instead to have better consistent speeds to multiple devices in the home. That, naturally, is BS and not what we were paying for, so surely there was something we were missing. At the same time, however, nothing we did seemed to help the situation, after trying everything from Powerline adapters to USB 3.0 Adapters. Getting the whole-home coverage we had prior to the upgrade was the first step. We went through 5 routers before landing on the Linksys model that did the trick; consistent speeds throughout the house (roughly 2200 sq ft between 2 floors and a half-finished basement). Our computers, though, still could not get more than 150 MB speeds (older, admittedly) or 200 MB speeds (bought within the last 6 months). After a lot of research as to why our gig-speed capable adapters weren't able to break the glass ceiling, we were suggested to try skipping wireless USB adapters completely and try a full wireless network card. This one caught my attention mostly due to its separate wired antennae since I do have computers that sit under glass desks. Installation wasn't too difficult, though I did have some trouble fitting it and my video card into the the same space (GTX 1070 is huge and covers one of the installation spots for the network card). But after setting up successfully and getting the drivers installed.....Dear God. Both computers are now pushing 600+ MB speeds. At primetime of the day, we've only dropped to maybe 550 MB? But it soared back up to 600+ soon after. This AC-88 was WELL WORTH the premium price-tag, especially with the time/money/headache we spent trying to get the most out of the internet upgrade over the course of about a month. I don't think I'll ever go back to USB adapters after this experience. I should also note that, the card itself was only able to pick up maybe 200 MB speeds by itself, without the wired antenne unit utilized. With it attached and sitting on my desk? Full 600+ MB speeds. And to think, I would have been happy with 300 - 400 MB speeds.

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Narut Ujnat

So far so very good. Will update (Updated)

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2021

Verified Purchase

I built a nice desktop rig for myself, but the motherboard did not have wi-fi on board so I needed a really good wi-fi card.

What I was looking for? I was looking for something that could handle 1 GB speeds (or close to the advertised limits realizing that 1GB isn't even achieved with an ethernet connection. I was looking for a card that would use PCI-E without needing a USB port for power. I was looking for a brand I know and trust, and also a decent price.

What I bought? I bought this with a view towards this hitting the criteria above, plus the many positive reviews. I also loved the external antenna being on a base with a magnet so this would stick on my computer case.

What I got?: I looked at a number of alternatives, but my motherboard is ASUS so I figured this would be a good purchase. The set-up was easy. Installed into the PCI slot with no problems. Then set-up the antenna. I like that you can either just install the antenna on the slot on the computer, or you can install the antenna to the base and with the magnet put this on your computer, which is what I chose. Then I went to ASUS support and downloaded the driver (though you are provided a disc with the same.

Without any issues, I was able to then turn on wi-fi and away I went. I experienced similar speeds as with the ethernet, which is amazing (though my router was close to the desk-top.

What else you should know? If you are reading reviews, there are some that have experienced issues after a while. I have had this a week, so I can't speak to this issue yet, and hope those are outliers. I will certainly update this review if I have any issues. Also, this has NO bluetooth, which is unlike may of the other cards. I have a dongle for this, so it isn't a deal breaker for me, but you should be aware of this. Also, the driver is dated, though it shouldn't matter, and probably doesn't. I hope ASUS does an update soon because it would look better.

Overall?: This is quite a bot of money to spend on a wi-fi card, but I am a gamer and heavy internet user, so I wanted a really good card that wasn't insanely expensive. I trust ASUS, had the motherboard and have other experiences. So far, this works really well. Hope this doesn't change.

****Update 9/10/2021: I was very happy and hoping I received "one of the good ones" with this adapter. It worked extremely well. But a few days ago suddenly I would lose a connection once in a while, and then today. Today, the 5Ghz connection basically just disappeared. Oh the adapter sees it, but when connected a 1GIG rate was less than 25Kbps. Are you kidding?

Now, I restarted the computer, and did some things, but this didn't change. I am aware there are some more detailed fixes getting into the software, but this is ridiculous. I should not be having to engage in detailed fixes that may or may not work (and I am not holding out hope based on other reviews) to try and resolve a basic function.

So, I am returning this thing. Too bad, ASUS is a great brand, but this item its clearly flawed. It seems ti be a software conflict of some sort. The unfortunate part is this adapter was first built in 2016 it appears (the model) and the software is the same since April, 2018! Well, clearly Asus is missing the boat here. I will return this for a Intel based chip and something 1/2 the cost. Too bad.

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Ben

essentially rendering the rating system useless, but that's a discussion for another time

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2017

Verified Purchase

This review is for the AC3100 PCIE wifi adapter, there is some confusion in these reviews because it seems that all wifi cards (and even some usb wifi adapters it would seem) sold by this vendor currently, and even some past cards share the same reviews....essentially rendering the rating system useless, but that's a discussion for another time. After only playing with this card very briefly (had about an hour and the girlfriend wanted to go out :/) I am not very impressed. Installation was easy, there were no initial driver issues that others have experienced, because most of them seemed to reference a USB adapter and not this card. I just plugged the card into an open pcie slot, popped in a thumb screw, threaded the 4 plug cord for the antenna base into the back and started my computer. Put in the driver disc and ran the setup. It worked great right away, with google and speedtest.net it got about 100mbps download and 14 upload with 8-10ish ping. I should mention my internet is capped at 120mbps so I don't think 100 has much more room to grow in the real world. This is pretty good, but it is almost exactly the same as I was getting with a netgear ac1200 adapter that was less than half the price. I played a little rocket league and my ping was almost identical to the netgear adapter, never dropping below 68. One strange issue was that I always notice the first game of rocket league after starting the game is very very pingy, usually about 100-150 ping. (Even back when it was a wired connection) With this new adapter it got much much worse for the first game, around 300. I tried going straight to asus website and redownloading the newer drivers and it made it much much worse. I could only get sub 10 to 10 mbps download and rocket league became unplayable. So reinserted the driver disk and repaired the drivers, now I can get 60-109 download and around 14 upload. I'm going to try move my router tonight and see what happens since the 2 different adapters were similarly iffy. I understand they will not be a wired connection, but 68+ ping just starts to give rocket league moments where it feels like it affects gameplay. The antenna base seems nice and high quality, bigger than expected and shown in the picture. The heat sink is sexy, but faces down in the case just like video cards and the back is somewhat ugly. Seems high quality in material though. I will update after playing around some more and moving the router.

I never did try the card again after moving my router. It turned out to be a more complicated scenario than I thought. I couldn't just move it to a different coax jack. I ended up discovering that in my rental home there were cat 5 cables pulled that were just dangling behind the coax wall plates. So I went out and spent $15 on wall plates with cat 5 jacks and $30ish on an ethernet switch and used it all to replace all the moronic and useless coax jacks with active ethernet jacks. This house ws built in 2016 why in gods name would you need any coax jacks let alone one in every room? Also I get wifi is what everyone wants, but for a stationary device such as a desktop or smart tv why would you add complexity to a system that does not need it by using wifi? Plug that baby in! Now I'm wired and the internets are all mine. *palpatine voice* INFINITE POWAAAA!!! My $100+ card sits in my pc disabled.