What is best configuration of two PCs sitting next to each other?

[crawfish]

I've got two PCs side by side, one equipped with an AX210 PCIe card, the other with an AX200. The former is using the 6 GHz band and achieves around 1.7 Gbps and the latter a little less on 5 GHz. This is with an Asus RT-BE92U router, which is in another room separated by a wall. I think this is pretty good, but the AX200 relies on DFS for its speed, and it gets knocked off by radar from time to time, typically putting me on channel 161 with all my apartment neighbors. This kills performance, and I have to turn the radio off and on to get it back to DFS. I happen to have another AX210 I can use to replace the AX200, and then I could use 6 GHz for both PCs. Will that degrade the performance of the first PC, which I care about a lot more, and if so, is it limited to specific usage patterns?

 

[RMerlin]

A lot of laptops use a whitelist to allow only some specific wifi cards. Chances are good that a laptop with an ax200 can be safely upgraded to an ax210 however.

It would only impact performance of the second PC if both PCs are downloading large amounts of data at the exact same time. Otherwise, for typical burst usage encountered in a home computer, you won't see much difference.

 

[crawfish]

My PCIe cards (made by Asus and TP-Link) are for desktop systems, and both systems are running Windows 11, so no worries about compatibility. Thanks for the info, I'll give it a shot!

BTW, for anyone stumbling upon this, I know the RT-BE92U has taken a lot of criticism since its release, and I'm sure it was well-deserved. However, I just got mine last week, and for my non-AIMesh, single router usage at least, it's been perfect with the latest firmware. It's replacing an XT8, which I'll keep as a backup.