OcUK Pinnacle Wi-Fi issues

[moonjam]

I recently bought a Pinnacle RTX 5090 64GB 16" QHD Laptop from OcUK and everything about it is perfect for my needs, with one exception - the Intel Tri-Band Wi-Fi 7 BE200 gives me a terrible connection, no matter what I do.

I have Full Fibre 900Mbps connection at home and at work. My router at home is Wi-Fi 6 and at work it's 7, however connecting the Pinnacle in either location give inconsistent and extremely poor connection speeds, sometimes as low as 1Mbps, even when I'm only 3m away from the router, which is unusable.

I have fully removed and reinstalled the Intel drivers, changed channels, frequencies and tried multiple configurations for the drivers and on the router but the fact that the issues persists in two different setups leads me to believe it's the laptop's wi-fi that's the issue. Especially since I have multiple devices in both locations, all connecting without a single speed issue.

Before I speak to OcUK about sending it back, I wanted to ask if this is an issue anyone else has dealt with?

 

[steveliddle]

Got a 5090 18" 32 GB pinnacle, was curious, so
ethernet: https://www.speedtest.net/result/18525183108.png
wifi: https://www.speedtest.net/result/18525201900.png

router is about 10 feet and almost direct line of sight, the ethernet cable is probably 5 metres as it goes around a door frame and a pile on the floor
also wifi 6, my win 10 never told me what it was

No issues so far with the laptop.
if other devices connect ok then it is not the wifi.

 

[Armageus]

If the WiFi card is user accessible - e.g. under a panel on the bottom, might just be worth checking that the antennas are connected.

Alternatively a replacement WiFi card with a different chip set e.g. Realtek can be had quite cheaply, as I've personally had issues with some recent Intel WiFi chipsets

 

[moonjam]

Thank you both! I don't think the card is easily accessible but will double check before I contact support. Really appreciate your time on this!

 

[MartinPercival]

Did you get anywhere with this. I just bought a 16" 5090 for Christmas and I'm seeing pretty poor wifi speeds like you did.

My router has it's own direct speedtest onboard, so I can see that it can achieve a full 400Mbps, where the laptop is struggling with around 30Mbps over wifi.

 

[moonjam]

Did you get anywhere with this. I just bought a 16" 5090 for Christmas and I'm seeing pretty poor wifi speeds like you did.

My router has it's own direct speedtest onboard, so I can see that it can achieve a full 400Mbps, where the laptop is struggling with around 30Mbps over wifi.

Sadly not. 30-40Mbps seems to be the max speed I can get, unless I'm stood *right* next to the router.

I still want to test it on some other wifi networks to see if the problem persists, but I'm not hopeful...

 

[MartinPercival]

It feels as if the antenna/card combination isn't as sensitive as some other devices. As you say, the throughput is fine if I sit next to the main router, but a single wall is enough to make a huge impact.

For comparison, a 6 year old ipad manages to cling to the signal and "only" drops to 300Mbps. (vs that 30 I mentioned).

The fact that it can manage the faster speeds up close makes me think there's no connection issue to the wifi card......could a damaged antenna give these kind of results?

 

[MartinPercival]

A quick update on this. The Pinnacle loves a strong signal, so I had a think about where my mesh boxes were placed round the house.

In summary, by adjusting the signal overlaps (ie moving stuff around ) I managed to get the strength (and more importantly the stability of that strength) up considerably in the main rooms of my house. There's a wifi strength app on the MS Store that helped me compare the laptop's perceived strength with my phone and ipad.

This seems to have done the trick for me. Still not quite hitting the peaks, but I'll need a lot more time to tune it any further.