Any PC Builders Out There?

I don't know if it was an article or a video, but I ran into one of them that stated that taking off the cover of your computer was no different than opening up the hood of your car. You have a starter, and alternator, a water pump, Etc. They are all just components. So I took off the cover of my computer..

 

Also I can't tell but, is that a GPU you have in the middle slot (hard to see on a phone).

You'll want to run it at the upper most slot. Though I don't know what motherboard you have, age, etc.

Edit: Found your motherboard, it's like I was saying above not all PCI slots run at the same speed (although some do for the first two).

In your case, you're running an item on PCI-E 3.0 vs using the faster PCI-E 4.0 slot above it.

 

Well, I guess its time to catch up with the rest of the world and get most of my devices hardwired and off the wifi. Got 1000ft of Cat6 ordered, along with some rj45 male/female connectors, an unmanaged ethernet switch, and a bunch of wall plates. I've never really done any "electrical" work before, but kinda looking forward to cutting some holes in drywall, crawling under the house to run wires to every room, and learning how to DIY some handyman work. Current plan is to have 4 google nest wifi routers (all "routers," not the "points" with built in speakers) throughout the house and 1 out in detached garage, all wired backhaul to the main switch/modem. Main goal is to have accessible ethernet ports in every room, with a secondary goal of improving wifi in general. I'm hopeful more devices hardwired will net better speeds on those devices, routers being wired backhaul will improve wifi, and less devices on wifi will further improve wifi.

Any thoughts, concerns, or tips with this plan?
For clarification, signal chain looks like this: Fiber<Modem<Router<16 port switch<Wall plates<4 other routers<(possible switches)<devices

 

Yeah top PCI-E is always the fastest. There are a few higher end boards that have a secondary slot at the same speeds as the top slot but it's rare.

 

With improved WiFi tech (and no desire to navigate my attic and pull wires), I've gone the opposite way. The only computer hardwired to my network is my Unraid server that runs pi-hole. There's anywhere from 35 to 45 devices active on my network. We run multiple HD streams and do online gaming, and there has been no issue with WiFi bandwidth. I have 3 Nest mesh routers, each with line-of-sight to one of the others, that most devices connect to, and a separate Asus router that I use for all my office devices that are close to it (TV, PS5, personal PC, work PC). And then there's a third WiFi router for the security system. Pretty much everything that needs a network connection has built-in WiFi, so I haven't had a need for a physical port elsewhere in the house. Most IoT devices use the 2.4GHz band, so the 5GHz bands are left uncluttered for the computers, tablets, phones, gaming consoles.

Most people should be fine with just a quality mesh system (Nest, Ubiquiti, etc.). It's really hard to saturate the WiFi bandwidth. IMHO, you would be going through a lot of trouble and cost and may see little to no improvement. Your test numbers will look better, but I doubt you would notice a change in your actual experience. On the plus side, though, you won't have to continuously chase the new WiFi standards.

 

We currently have a mesh system (2016 I think? Google wifi, the little white round puck looking ones). Using 3 points throughout the house, they do just fine for streaming on tvs, gaming on pc's, phones, and everything else. Most would never notice any difference, but I primarily want mine and my wife's PC's to be hardwired. We pay for 500MB fiber, and definitely get 500-700 MBps at any given time at the main modem/router. Plugging direct into either of the wireless mesh points, the signal drops to about 180MB or less. Wireless speeds obviously less than that. In the detached garage (about 35 yds away from modem), the wifi might as well be nonexistent. We've tried an extender with no luck. It works, but barely. Definitely not enough to stream on the garage tv, or even scroll TW/youtube on the phone. Don't know if its just the walls/appliances in the way or what, but our wifi has always just been near impossible to reach the garage no matter what we've tried. I'm hopeful running a line to it and having a point out there will help some. At the very least, I can at least plug the tv in direct and be able to stream games out there. As for wires to each room inside the house, we already plug our PCs in "direct" to the points in those rooms. The 300+ MB jump to the PC's alone will be worth it to me, simply for downloading games/gaming.

Building a network is something I'm not all that familiar with though, so no idea if adding 2 more points for a total of 5 (google says not to use more than 5) and actually having 2 additional points closer to the garage/in the garage will help the wifi or not to the extent I hope it will.

 

Cat 8 is the current standard.

 

Yeah, that detached garage is a problem. Especially if it is a metal building. We have a newer Nest mesh system that supports WiFi 6/6E and I am able to place them where there are no obstructions between them -- one at the front of the house, one in the middle, and one at the back, which gives us good coverage even in the (attached) garage and out back. Minimizing obstructions is key, but it's not always possible. I would love to have the Amplifi Alien mesh system with wired backhaul, I just can't justify the cost and trouble of running cable.

 

I'm not rich I don't expect we'll ever exceed an internet plan for 10GBps at any point in our lifetime.

 

This is definitely an issue for us. Our home layout has multiple walls between each point (and not bc we have a big house, just bc theres lots of unnecessary walls/room layout sucks lol). I noticed you said that each of your points were within eyesight of each other. Do you think it would be more ideal to shift points to places in each room where eyesight between each point through doorways where applicable can be achieved, even if that means increasing distance between the points? I'm thinking placement for the 2 new points can be achievable where the furthest point in house can see the garage point through house/garage windows vs behind those respective walls.

 

Some of this might depend on how the mesh system works. If each point is making a direct connection back to the base for backhaul, it may not make a difference since it isn't bouncing through the points with the best connection. To be honest, I have no idea how my system does that, but even the furthest point reports a great connection and it would have to go through multiple walls to directly reach the base. I would think that zero obstructions at a further distance would be better, and any metal obstructions are really bad (like appliances).

But yes, it's certainly worth a shot to minimize any barriers between points. I'm just lucky that my office in the front of the house has an angled doorway that points to the middle of the main hall, and the main hall has line of sight to the mantle above the fireplace at the back of the house.

 

Yep!

I had SLI/Crossfire back in the day so that's when I remember the middle slot being the same speed as the top slot. Had to look up his board to confirm if it was more modern or older.

Those were the days...

 

I think for a few of the points, I'll be able to position them to lessen barriers. And since I'll have an excess of cable, hopefully I'll be able to move them around various places to experiment. I may also consider getting them higher off the ground where applicable too.

 

I’m glad this mesh system conversation came up. I’ve been struggling at my house to have a decent connection and looking to upgrade room. I am planning to hardwire my gaming PC and our main TV since it’s not hard to do. The rest of the house will run off wifi and has limited demand (cell phone scrolling, dog camera, etc) but the coverage in the house sucks. It’s a long one floor ranch with a walk out basement and has multiple steel I-beams which I think kills the connection between points. The steel is supported with stone columns as well so it’s a struggle. I need to look into the direct connection for backhaul that’s being discussed here. Is that basically just running Cat cable between the mesh points?

 

Not exactly. I'm brand new to all this, so take my words with a grain of salt and I have no idea what the correct terminology should be most the time lol. Note, some mesh system "points" may not have the capability of backhauling a wired connection. In my research over the weekend, I learned that the Google Nest "points" (the ones with speakers) can't be hardwired/only have an "output" port; however, the main router/point (without the speaker) does support wired connection, and can also act as a "point" either wired or wirelessly, so I ordered multiple Google Nest "router-only" to make up my system. You'll have to research your specific model to confirm whether wired backhaul is supported.

I don't even wanna pretend like I know what I'm talking about, so hopefully someone else can chime in, but I'm not entirely sure that daisy-chaining each point together is the same solution as wiring each point individually back to the main router/modem. I suppose you might get similar results if thats possible, but I also imagine it opens up room for error if any of the points/cables in the loop happen to become compromised. Again, no idea, but just my initial thoughts when I starting diving into this over this last weekend.

 

I like the idea of using multiple points of a mesh system to have a strong wifi signal across the house. I just have connectivity issues between the points because of our house so I was thinking a direct wire to the “main point” for each end unit would be best.

I also know little to nothing however

 

Got some of the parks for the new PC in.

 

I'm just hopeful this project pays off lol. If nothing else, I'll learn how to terminate and make my own ethernet cables, drill holes in sheetrock, and crawl under the house. I'm sure the main benefit of the project will just be getting more familiar and confident with some "handyman" stuff. I just hope it doesn't come at the cost of an easily avoidable expensive mistake (like drilling holes into places that shouldn't be drilled). After piddling around the garage and taking some "before" speed tests today, I guess I finally realized there's a metal toolbox, metal door, metal fridge, metal toolbox, and metal safe all along the garage wall I can't seem to penetrate with wifi . Taking a few steps outside the garage door into open air is a connect/disconnect from wifi difference essentially. Speeds in every room of the house ranged from 120-180 mbps; Outside of garage was like 30mbps, inside literally disconnected during the speed test or was 0.something each time.

 

Coming back to this project; replaced the 3 existing Google wifi mesh system with 5 Google Nest routers. Kept position the same for the first 3, then added one in room closest to garage in windowsill, and the other in windowsill of detached garage, direct line of sight from each other. Fortunately, this completely fixed the issue of non-existent wifi in the garage. I know speed tests fluctuate at any given time, but I made sure to do multiple speed tests in every room of the house before, with new 3 points, with new 4 points, and again with new 5 points. All in all, I was able to pick up on some trends and see how adding points helped, as well as hurt some areas. Ultimately, using this new 5 point mesh system, it was a net positive in speeds for every single room.

Original system speeds ranging every room in the house were 108-162 (down)/46-134 (up).
Plugging PC's "direct" into 2 of the points, speeds ranged 160-180 (down)/108-143(up).
Garage speeds were 0.44 (down)/0.18 (up).

New system speeds were 107-294(down)/76-335(up).
PC's "direct" were 445-573(down)/545-615(up).
Garage speeds were 140(down)/128(up).

Overall, super happy with the improvements of the new wifi system alone. I can't wait to run ethernet to every room to further increase device speeds, and I'll also be super interested to see how (or even if) plugging each point in direct affects the wifi afterwards.

 

One thing to keep an eye out on is ping times. If you have too many Mesh points, you can start to see issues where devices start hopping between two different mesh points intermittently. This won't show up on a speedtest usually, since they measure the highest speed over a short period of time. What will show up is a packet loss and ping spike if you're streaming content or playing an online game. The routers software should help prevent this and mostly does with newer equipment, but it can still be an issue as more Mesh points are added.