ASUS PCE-AC66 Next Generation AC Dual-Band Wireless Adapter IEEE 802.11ac, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n PCI Express Up to 1750Mbps (450/1300Mbps) Wireless Data Rates

Pros: Genuinely a quality wireless card by ASUS, the fact that it comes with a remote magnetic antenna stand is fantastic. I was able to get 5 bars from 40 ft away through a kitchen and 2 walls.

I was skeptical purchasing the card because of the high price, but it was completely worth it because this card is top of the line. I'm getting 300mb/s steady and only because I am using a Wireless-N access point and not an AC one. However, my friend brought his over just so I could test it out, and it was amazingly fast. Can't wait to invest in one myself.

Cons: The antenna cords could be a little bit longer, my desk is big and I feel it could be better placed in orientation to my access point if I had just another foot of wire. All in all, a great card overall.

Other Thoughts: For those of you giving this card bad reviews, don't forget you actually need an AC router or point in order to achieve maximum speeds! READ!

Pros: The signal strength improvement from my old USB wifi adapter to this new one was impressive. I went from having 1-2 bars to full signal. My wifi is coming from the complete other side of the house and a floor down through several walls, and I am able to communicate at the full router speed. Install was easy (10 minutes and I was teaching my roommate at the same time, while drinking!) and I had no issues with the size of the heatsink as others had reported. I was up and running within minutes. Seriously, this is what the Wifi adapter market has been missing.

Cons: Windows 7 (64 bit enterprise) did not recognize the software publisher for the driver installation or the driver itself. Windows repeatedly told me it was unhappy about this, but I just told it to shut up and take the driver like a man! It installed fine with no issues. I can see how some with a small motherboard may have issues with the size of the heatsink, but I did not encounter an issue. Maybe if I had more PCI cards I would complain more.

Other Thoughts: I wish it came with a longer cord for the antenna, three feet barely made it to the top front of my tower.

I will update with more info if I encounter any problems or have new information to share.

Pros: Very fast and great signal, speed, and it's AC

Cons: Was a little expensive but it worked great so none really

Other Thoughts: drivers are a little odd

Pros: Has the fastest speeds for downloading.
has an antenna that extends via cable to a location that is not behind the computer. you can set it on your desk. This results in better signal. It actually seems to pick up signals and not only does it process data quickly; it gives signals that might have been 70 percent signal strength to 90 or 95.

Cons: the antenna cord could have been longer. The software that comes with it seems pretty basic and sort of redundant.
the price is pretty high. Not saying it isn't well built or anything but its just not fun or exciting to buy network cards for almost a 90-100 bucks. I mean nobody who is performance minded wants to use a network card over an Ethernet cord. But I had to use WiFi for sharing utilities with the next door neighbor.

Other Thoughts: I tried another network card, the TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 Dual Band Wireless N900 PCI for 42 bucks. That didnt get a stronger signal than my phone. So the speed was slower. I returned it, and forked out the money for the asus 5g wallet killer card and only then did things start making me happy.

Pros: Runs great when it works.

Cons: I have to keep moving this card to different PCI-E GPU slots or it will NOT work. I am tired of having to open my pc reset everything, add it to another GPU (RED) slot. (Black slots do NOT work with CVF-Z board. Second board. Same issue

Other Thoughts: Needs new driver/flash or something to get this thing working correctly. My Admin account was deleted while watching Netflix. I am getting tired of the RMA process. This was too expensive to be so much of a pain to keep working. I have the newest drivers from Asus. Still none of the small Black slots will run this card. Im sick of it.

Pros: Extremely FAST when working. However, wont work in a small PCE slot. Only works in my PCI-E GPU slots. Cant move it around much or it will quit. find a slot and lock it down. Just don't expect to fit another graphics card in the CVF-Z board if you have one of these. It may only be mine that does this. I have no idea.

Cons: Wont work with proper slot. Have to use PCI-E slot for GPU.

Other Thoughts: Asus is cool. But, I have had too many consecutive issues with this build. I am sure it will all work out once all is said and done. I just HATE the RMA process, time, and running all round preparing RMAs and shipping. Then the ....wait...\. But hey, all my Asus equipment ROCKS once the issues are dealt with. Electronics are just a pain these days with the mass production due to demand.

Pros: None at this time

Cons: Drops all the time not very good for the money

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

I am sorry you did not have a good experience with your PCE-AC66 wireless adatper. If you are willing to take the time, please contact me so that I may try to help you. If you could provide me the details of your network and what you have already tried to do, I would appreciate it.
What router are you trying to connect this to? 2.4 or 5ghz signal?
Are you using the antennas on the card or are you using the magnetic base?
Have you tried changing the wireless settings on your router? settings on the card?

You can reach me at cl-jeremy@asus.com at your convenience and I will be happy to help in any way that I can.

Regards,
Jeremy
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: If you were an early adopter of wireless-g or wireless-n and had good experiences with it, or have ever enjoyed overclocking your computer, you'll love this ASUS AC1750 Dual Band PCE-AC66 adapter card. In use, it absolutely makes older adapters look like antique junk.

The card comes with a utility that allows you to take it from a default of 100 milliwatts to 200 milliwatts @2.4 GHz.. At wireless-ac 5 GHz., you can go from the default 80 milliwatts to 200 milliwatts also. To top all of this off, the utility really works, and the power increases really do makes significant transmission gains you can also see in detail from the utility. The utility was stable and worked great on my ASUS M4A78-E with its AMD Phenom II x4 955 - not to mention the card also.

You don't even have to load anything but the driver - if you don't want to. Windows 7 sees this card just like any other working adapter. One thing, unlike some adapters that require the driver disk run before the actual install of the hardware. you just install the card and then the driver.

I saw rates with this card as high as 1300 Mbps. in wireless ac, and had steady rates at 866 Mbps. without even changing settings from the default. Wireless-n @ 2.4 GHz. was also high at 300 stable to 450 Mbps. - and this was through two walls an 40-feet from a new TRENDnet TEW-812DRU router (AC1750).

Installing the card and drivers was also a breeze in Windows 7 Ultimate x64. I did have one minor glitch you can read below, but it was easily remedied.

I haven't tried it yet, but the connections on the card are reverse SMA - and I own a high gain 2.4 GHz. tuned hotspot antenna that will connect to this card. I used it years back with a long gone wireless-g business router with 100 milliwatts of power. With that antenna in my attic, this card just might impress me on the 2.4 GHz. end like the first time I added a kicker and a professional antenna to a CB radio I had years ago. When I powered that baby up, everyone heard me clearly for miles and miles.

Cons: Cost at over $90 is a kick in the head, but the gains this thing makes over older wireless-a/b/g/n, and lower rated wireless-ac/b/g/n, makes that easier to deal with once the card is installed.

The card is very small, but has a THICK heatsink (a plus really for keeping the card processor cool and stable, and the card is really stable). I initially used a PCIe x1 slot next to my large ASUS Dark Knight video card. The fins on the heatsink interfered with the OEM pins holding the fan on the video card. I corrected that by moving my ASUS EHC3150 tuner card to that slot, and connecting the adapter card to the PCIe x1 slot the tuner card had been using.

The magnetic antenna cord is only three feet long. If it had been five or six feet long, it would make placement of the antenna much easier for best signal gain - as it could then be placed higher and further from other equipment.

The drivers are unsigned, but they work solidly and installed easily on my computer.

Other Thoughts: After seeing the performance of this adapter first hand, I hope the price comes down. I have three more computers, using wireless adapters in my home, and I would like to update each of them with new ASUS PCE-AC66 adapter cards. The boost in my network speeds should more than triple from what I've already seen.

Pros: For all of you giving this a bad revue u really don't know how to build computers. First of all this card doesn't say that it will fit in a PCI slot, cause it will only fit in the PCI Express slot and all your newer Motherboards come with at least one of these Mini PCI Express slots. Some Motherboards only come with the Graphics style Motherboards but this card will still work just fine in one of those with out any problems.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: If u don't know what your doing please don't buy this and then give it a bad revue just cause u have a Motherboard that isn't compatible with it. That isn't Asus's Fault nor is it Newegg's fault that u can't read before buying something.

Pros: Looks shiny, triple-antennae, small form-factor available.

Cons: Doesn't connect to an ASUS RT-AC66U, its router peer by ASUS. I've upgraded both the router to the latest non-beta (3.0.0.4.270) firmware and the Win8x64 driver (6.30.95.19). I get better performance with my previous card running at 802.11g over 2.4GHz than this PCE-AC66 card on either spectrum at 802.11n.

Other Thoughts: I bought this NIC because the RT-AC66U is one rock-solid router and I figured I couldn't go wrong by buying the same technology for my desktop. The allure of 450/1300 Mbps was too good to pass up.

I'm completely frustrated with this card. :( It just doesn't work. Very disappointing.