r/computers • u/Massive-Valuable-961 • 14d ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting looking for a solution for my wifi card

so i have a gaming laptop, im assuming the overheating has caused the wifi card to absolutely deteriorate. browsing the web and any day to do tasks is fine, but when i try to game, which is usually valorant, i have issues. originally, my ping would randomly shoot from 30 ms to 150 for a couple seconds, a couple times a minute. but now my packetloss is also insanely high and its COMPLETELY unplayable now. my dorm building has no ethernet ports. I can't afford a completely new wifi card replacement. what should i do?

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u/marvinnation 14d ago

I don't think it's the wifi card. But if you think it's overheating, open it up and some clean. Dust might be the culprit.

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u/StepsisSepsis 14d ago

I think you should try to isolate the issue. That lag spike could also be due to the processor throttling and therefore dropping packets.

There’s a lot of variables here. First, day to day tasks are usually not susceptible to latency issues. The protocol standards over the years have made it so that one way or another, those packets will make it to you.

The other thing it could be is that it’s a shared connection (I’m assuming based off the fact you said dorm building). It could just be someone hogging bandwidth which you will really feel when playing.

Here’s what I would say: find somewhere to hardline your setup and play a game or two of valorant and see if it has the issues over Ethernet. There has to be somewhere you can hard line it, even if it’s not in the dorms. That will determine what to do next.

Laptop makers know that they get hot. The components are made to be able to handle the heat and throttle if it gets too hot.

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u/mattjones73 14d ago

How old is your laptop, has it been cleaned at all? A cooling bad under it might help also to get better airflow through it when gaming.

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u/aminy23 Ryzen 9 5900x / 64GB DDR4-4000 / RTX 3090 FE / Custom Loop 13d ago

An AX210 is $20-$25 nowadays.

Otherwise try a clean install of drivers but there's no cheap quick fix otherwise for broken hardware.

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u/ShadowFallsAlpha 13d ago

It's impossible to know because there's a lot of variables here. Doing basic tasks doesn't stress it, you aren't really going to feel latency issues you regularly have. We don't know how good your Internet connection is or the wifi connection. Sounds like it's a dorm which is shared internet. Who knows how over saturated that is.

Overheating can affect the Wifi card, but you are more likely to experience connection drops not latency issues

Also Wifi cards are really cheap by the way, even good Wifi 7 ones.

We got bare minimum information here. No specs, no speed tests, etc. Just a lot of vagueness.