People love to dunk on onboard Wi-Fi, but it's perfectly usable in most situations. You might avoid it for gaming or home lab transfers, but it's frankly more than enough for video calling, browsing, and working on online documents. No one's asking you to buy motherboards for the built-in Wi-Fi, but it's a convenient feature to have as a backup. If you're experiencing slow or inconsistent connection on your motherboard's Wi-Fi, a few tweaks can make it significantly better. Give each one of these a shot before you rush into that Wi-Fi adapter purchase.

Move to a better frequency band and channel

Eliminate congestion to give your adapter the best chance

One of the major sources of Wi-Fi slowdown is a congested frequency band. Your motherboard's Wi-Fi might not be as fast as a wired connection, but you might be wrong in pinning all the blame on it. Windows may be defaulting to the 2.4GHz band instead of the 5GHz one, resulting in your PC competing for bandwidth with other devices in your house. The 2.4GHz band supports a longer range (up to 200 ft), but it's made up of three 20MHz channels that can get congested pretty quickly. The 5GHz band, on the other hand, includes six 80MHz channels — these wider channels allow faster speeds if your internet plan is equipped for it. The maximum range is reduced (up to 150 ft), but that might not be an issue if your router is in the next room.

Wi-Fi 6E introduced the 6GHz band, allowing devices to use up to seven 160MHz or three 320MHz channels. If your router and motherboard support it, you should switch to this band for the maximum speed and least congestion. Wi-Fi 6E has a range of around 115 ft, but Wi-Fi 7 extends that to around 150 ft. Switching your PC to one of the two (or three) bands available on your router is as simple as connecting to the respective network. However, you can also change the default channel for each band by modifying your router's settings and switching to a less crowded channel. Your router might scan neighboring networks to report a suitable channel to switch to, or you can use a program like Wi-Fi Analyzer to find a better channel yourself.

Disable your adapter's power-saving settings

Pull out all the stops

You might not know it, but your network adapter's properties might be the reason behind the sluggish performance of your Wi-Fi. Many power-saving settings might be enabled by default, and could be forcing your adapter into a low-power state. While these settings can be helpful on a laptop where battery life is a concern, they only hamper the Wi-Fi performance on your desktop PC. Settings like the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" checkbox in the adapter properties, and "Energy Efficient Ethernet" and "Power Saving Mode" in the "Advanced" tab should be disabled to avoid an inadvertent performance throttling on your network adapter.

Update your network drivers

Don't let outdated drivers bottleneck your adapter

You might be staying on top of your GPU drivers and Windows updates, but it's easy to overlook the drivers for your network adapter. Outdated drivers can sometimes cause performance and stability issues on your Wi-Fi, and the worst part is that Windows won't prompt you if your network drivers are too old. Updating them via Device Manager is usually the first step, but if Windows is unable to find an updated driver, make sure to check your motherboard manufacturer's website for the latest network drivers. You can compare the driver version and date shown in Device Manager with those listed next to available drivers on your motherboard's page on the manufacturer's website.

Change the router location

Faster Wi-Fi bands can't penetrate obstacles

Your motherboard's onboard Wi-Fi could be great, but without a clear line of sight to the router, it won't perform as it should. Often, the router is located one or two rooms away, hidden behind walls and forced to penetrate through doors to reach your PC. This can play spoilsport with your PC's Wi-Fi performance, no matter how expensive your motherboard is. Try to move your router so that it's in line with your PC. Eliminating closed doors and intercepting walls can make a huge difference in the connection reliability, especially if you're using the high-speed 5GHz or 6GHz bands. If possible, move your PC to the same room as your router for the best results.

Don't place your PC under the desk

Or too close to the wall

This one is so common that most people don't even consider it a possible culprit behind poor Wi-Fi performance. Your motherboard's Wi-Fi performance depends on how well the antennas can receive the signal from your router. If you keep your tower below your desk, tucked safely away from the Wi-Fi signal, you're unlikely to get the best results. Similar to a subpar router location, a PC hidden from sight can easily tank your connection speed and stability.

Your PC will constantly try to hop between networks to find one that works best, introducing disconnections and slowdowns. And you'll blame the onboard Wi-Fi instead of everything else. Even when you place your tower on the desk, ensure it isn't too close to the wall, or else you'll run into similar challenges.

It's not onboard Wi-Fi that's the problem — it's everything around it

Before you conclude that onboard Wi-Fi can never be good, try fixing the infrastructure around your PC. Your router and tower might be in suboptimal locations, causing poor performance and reliability. Even the default Windows and router settings can create easily avoidable problems. Onboard Wi-Fi on motherboards has come a long way, and it's more than capable for common use cases. Unless you're playing multiplayer games or transferring massive amounts of data on your home server, you can use your motherboard's built-in Wi-Fi without major issues.