ASUS PCE-AC88
For blazing fast Wi-Fi.
For those who crave the ultimate wireless performance, the PCE-AC88 is ready to deliver. Built on the PCIe form factor, the network card has four send/receive antennae, making it AC3100 spec. In other words, it can handle a massive 1,000Mbps on 2.4GHz and 2,167Mbps on 5GHz. There are a few caveats, of course — you will need a compatible 4x4 router, and the unit won’t work at full speed if it can’t spread out and operate over multiple Wi-Fi channels. In real-world testing, the AC88 is crazy fast, and in fact limited by the Gigabit network on the other end of our test. At longer range, the Wi-Fi adapter maintained impressively high speeds that were almost on par with Gigabit Ethernet.
The AC88 uses a half-height PCIe card, with chunky integrated heatsink. While the antennae can be mounted directly to the card, it also comes with a very handy base station and extension cables. It’s magnetic too, which makes it very easy to position.