The PC I'm building for a customer is very similar to what I've done many times before but this time the customer needed wifi and I wanted a tidier arrangement than to have a USB wifi adapter this time (I regret this decision in hindsight).
I picked out a PCIE card that looked reasonable, an ASUS AX3000 card and it also has Bluetooth for an added bonus.
I built the computer, I was about to boot it for the first time when I decided to tidy up a bit, separate recyclable packaging, that kind of thing. That's when I encountered a funny-looking cable that came with the Wifi card. The instructions that came with the card don't mention the cable. I looked at one end of the cable and had a sinking feeling: A USB 2.0 connector to plug into a motherboard header, and I'm already using both board USB 2.0 headers (anyone notice they're not in bountiful supply on boards these days?), one to supply a front USB 2.0 port and one to supply two ports at the back. In about three seconds of looking at this cable I realise what now looks to be true in that for some bizarre reason the Bluetooth capabilities are fed through the USB interface on the card and the BT is recognised as a USB device. Sure enough, in Device Manager, there's a wifi card entry but no BT (Win11 would have picked it up as generic BT I'm sure). I'll test my theory completely before I sacrifice either the extra two rear USB 2.0 ports I installed (most likely), which then I'll have to put in a blanking plate (not black, naturally) or the front USB 2.0 port which isn't really needed given that the case also has a front USB 3.0 port, but who would want to see a non-functional USB port in plain sight on a new PC.
Grr.
What I find really bizarre though is that this wifi card is not a normal PCIE card in the sense that one would expect to see the ICs mounted directly on the PCB, this card has a mini-PCIE slot that a laptop mini-PCIE card connects into, and given that combined Wifi + BT cards in laptops are far more common than wifi-only cards and they don't freaking need additional USB connectivity THEN WHY THE HELL DOES THIS ONE?!?
The card (without additional drivers) recognises as an Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz device. Gee whiz, what a surprise: Intel has BT drivers to download for this card too.
I picked out a PCIE card that looked reasonable, an ASUS AX3000 card and it also has Bluetooth for an added bonus.
I built the computer, I was about to boot it for the first time when I decided to tidy up a bit, separate recyclable packaging, that kind of thing. That's when I encountered a funny-looking cable that came with the Wifi card. The instructions that came with the card don't mention the cable. I looked at one end of the cable and had a sinking feeling: A USB 2.0 connector to plug into a motherboard header, and I'm already using both board USB 2.0 headers (anyone notice they're not in bountiful supply on boards these days?), one to supply a front USB 2.0 port and one to supply two ports at the back. In about three seconds of looking at this cable I realise what now looks to be true in that for some bizarre reason the Bluetooth capabilities are fed through the USB interface on the card and the BT is recognised as a USB device. Sure enough, in Device Manager, there's a wifi card entry but no BT (Win11 would have picked it up as generic BT I'm sure). I'll test my theory completely before I sacrifice either the extra two rear USB 2.0 ports I installed (most likely), which then I'll have to put in a blanking plate (not black, naturally) or the front USB 2.0 port which isn't really needed given that the case also has a front USB 3.0 port, but who would want to see a non-functional USB port in plain sight on a new PC.
Grr.
What I find really bizarre though is that this wifi card is not a normal PCIE card in the sense that one would expect to see the ICs mounted directly on the PCB, this card has a mini-PCIE slot that a laptop mini-PCIE card connects into, and given that combined Wifi + BT cards in laptops are far more common than wifi-only cards and they don't freaking need additional USB connectivity THEN WHY THE HELL DOES THIS ONE?!?
The card (without additional drivers) recognises as an Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 160MHz device. Gee whiz, what a surprise: Intel has BT drivers to download for this card too.