They overheat easily, when subjected to a constant connection load, and burn out. Pretty-much, NEVER use those little "nano wireless dongles". That's a full-size dongle, that I'm talking about. Worse yet, is a USB wireless dongle, which, you may need to get a USB3.0 extension cable, so that you can maneuver the dongle to where you get the best signal, and get it up higher, like on a desk. (Preferably, both will be AC1200 or better.)
If that's not available, then consider a Wireless Media Bridge, and connect the PC wired to the bridge, and configure it wireless to talk to your AP. However, for a gaming PC you really should run a wire directly to the router as wired is always better for situations that depend on a reliable connection with low latency (games).Ĭlick to expand.Generally, for best connection for gaming, you want a Wired Ethernet connection. The Netgear bridge should work acceptably as long as it is configured properly and is not too far from the main router since it has VERY limited useful range.
Even when they do work fairly well, they tend to overheat quickly and then performance suffers a lot. Using a B adapter in an N environment can sometimes cause problems with speed on the other devices as well.įor the gaming PC, I've never had good results from any "stick" USB wireless adapter like the Panda. How old is the iMac? It's entirely possible that it only has a B wireless adapter in it, which will never get good speeds even in an absolutely perfect environment. If you want to get anywhere near (but never actually AT) the realistic maximum speeds, you need to have good quality equipment, good environment (little to no interference from other wireless radio sources), short distance between devices, and some luck. The "rating" on a wireless device is just a theoretical maximum, as VirtualLarry said.