Is it worth getting a wifi card?

[doutee]

Hi all

I'm pretty certain just hanging an ethernet cable from my PC to the router will suit me fine, but as I'm buying my first new PC in best part of a decade I just wondered if it would make life a little easier going forward if I just went for it and put a wifi card in? If so, any suggestions on what is worthwhile / overkill? I'll be doing usual streaming tv/film stuff, plus online gaming (racing games mostly).

Thanks for your time! (Any other suggestions welcome too!)


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[keynes]

For your budget I would suggest an i5. If you have the option of using an ethernet cable I don't see why you need a wireless card. An ethernet cable will be better, faster and more reliable.

 

[Oussebon]

The i5 7600 + H110M-R mobo combo would be a cash saver. https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/intel-home-office-pc/

I wouldn't suggest the i5 7600k + Z270 as being particularly good value at the moment.

If you could stretch £100-£150 more though you could get an i7 7700k with much faster RAM, which might be an asset for some games and help feed future GPUs better.

 

[Tony1044]

I'm with Keynes entirely. It's a desktop, so unless you're planning to relocate it somewhere you can't physically get a cable to then a WiFi card is a waste.

You will get far less latency (probably not much of an issue to most people if they don't game, providing it isn't hideous) and of course it isn't affected by extraneous signals from other equipment.

 

[doutee]

Thank you all for your responses. Glad to know I'm not missing anything about the relative pointlessness of a wifi card.

Thanks too for the i5 suggestions. I'm happy to go for a ryzen 6 core due to the relatively little amount of difference in gaming and huge discrepancy elsewhere in productivity. Plus AMD have good form in providing compatibility going forward, so odds are a zen 2 chip will work in a couple of years, whereas going intel will likely mean a new mobo when upgrading.

 

[Oussebon]

The suggestions were based on:

I'll be doing usual streaming tv/film stuff, plus online gaming (racing games mostly).

If you'd said you'd be doing video encoding and 3d rendering then people would probably have agreed the R5 was best value off the bat.

Apparently Cannonlake will use the same socket as Skylake and Kaby Lake: https://www.pcgamesn.com/intel-cannonlake-10nm

 

[doutee]

Ah apologies for not being clearer. I meant my internet use would mainly be streaming / gaming, in reference to whether getting a wifi card would be any use vs sticking to ethernet.

Thanks for the info on cannonlake though, I wasn't aware of that.