If you’re serious about PC gaming, an Ethernet cable is still the best way to connect to the internet. However, for many of us, that simply isn’t practical. Thankfully, Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E have come a long way to closing the gap between wired and wireless performance, and the Asus PCE-AXE59BT is one of the best Wi-Fi adapters you can get for your desktop PC to help with this. This PCI-Express adapter supports Wi-Fi 6 connections at 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6Ghz with up to 2,402Mbps on the 5GHz and 6GHz bands.
It also supports Bluetooth 5.2, so you can use a wireless headset for audio or connect a controller for gaming. Furthermore, many wireless keyboards and mice support Bluetooth, so you could significantly reduce the number of wires crowding your desk. There are cheaper Wi-Fi 6 adapters available, but to get the best performance out of a modern gaming Wi-Fi router, an adapter like this one with 160MHz support helps you get all the speed of your network.
ASUS PCE-AXE59BT
Powerful Wi-Fi adapter
It’s easy to install, too
$65 $70 Save $5
The Asus PCE-AXE59BT is a powerful Wi-Fi 6E Wi-Fi adapter with an included magnetic antenna. Rocking a MediaTek MT7922 Wi-Fi module, this adapter supports connection speeds up to 2,402Mbps at 5GHz and 6GHz. The magnetic antenna can also help improve your signal by getting it up higher or on the correct side of the PC case.
Pros
- Easy installation in a PCIe x1 slot
- Small form factor bracket included
- Stable drivers and performance in Windows 11
- The magnetic antenna offers better signal than standard antennas
Cons
- The heatsink doesn’t do anything
- The included instructions were minimal
Pricing and availability
The Asus PCE-AXE59BT was released in spring 2023 at a suggested price of $70. This PCI Express x1 card comes with an external antenna with a magnetic base, a USB cable needed for Bluetooth, and an extra bracket for small form factor PCs, such as those commonly used in an office. You can grab this card directly from the Asus web store or pick it up from retailers like Amazon and B&H.
While you can use this card with a Windows 10 driver, 6GHz Wi-Fi is only available with Windows 11. You will need a vacant PCI Express slot on your motherboard to install the card and an open USB 2.0 header if you want to use Bluetooth. Finally, you may need to go into your PC’s BIOS and disable an existing Wi-Fi card to avoid conflicts if it already has one built in.
Design and hardware
There’s nothing wrong with being overbuilt
The first time I ever saw the inside of a computer, my father was cautiously installing a Modem Blaster dial-up modem in our Windows 98 family PC. This experience opened my eyes to the possibilities of upgrading a PC and breathing new life into an aging design. A networking upgrade, like the Asus PCE-AXE59BT, can help you get faster and more consistent speeds on your PC thanks to using modern Wi-Fi 6E standards as well as supporting 160MHz connections. Based on the MediaTek Filogic 330 (MT7922), this card allows for 2.4Gbps in both upload and download speeds when paired with a fast router at 5GHz and 6GHz, while 2.4GHz tops out at 574Mbps.
Bluetooth 5.2 is also supported thanks to the internal USB cable used to connect the card. If you’re a gamer, you can use this Bluetooth connection with your game controllers or wireless headset to eliminate some wires. If you’re not gaming, you can even use Bluetooth for your mouse and keyboard.
One common problem with Wi-Fi upgrades in desktops is that you often end up with your card in one of the lower slots of your motherboard. If you used a standard antenna connected to the back of your PC tower, there could be a ton of interference from other cables running past the antennas. Another problem is the big metal PC case that blocks your Wi-Fi signal if the back of the PC faces the router. This Wi-Fi adapter has a fairly large external antenna that avoids the problem by moving the antennas away from your case. The magnetic base of the antennas can be stuck right to the side of your PC case facing the router for the best possible connection.
The card itself is quite small and comes with a small form factor adapter in the box. On the card, there is a fairly large heatsink over the Wi-Fi chipset, and to be frank, it doesn’t do much more than make it look nice. Realistically, this product is more of an adapter board for the MediaTek card underneath, which doesn’t need extra cooling. There’s nothing really wrong with adding this heatsink, but it feels extra worthless that it’s not even touching the WI-Fi module beneath. Besides that, the entire package feels nice, with a black PCB that matches well with most gaming motherboards.
A networking upgrade, like the Asus PCE-AXE59BT, can help you get faster and more consistent speeds on your PC thanks to using modern Wi-Fi 6E standards as well as supporting 160MHz connections.
I installed the card in the bottom PCI Express (PCIe) x16 slot on my MSI Pro B650-P WiFi motherboard and immediately had issues. After some troubleshooting, it turned out that the built-in Wi-Fi on my board conflicted with the new card, and I had neglected to turn it off. After a trip to the BIOS to switch off the built-in Wi-Fi, the system booted up and worked like a charm. Windows found the right driver for the card and required no further configuration.
One thing to note is that this is a PCIe x1 card, and Asus has specifically noted that it is only compatible with PCIe x1 slots in the specification. Still, the card could be used in a larger slot with its default PCIe configuration in my PC The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X CPU and MSI B650 motherboard in my PC had no trouble with the card in the bottom x16 slot.
Software and setup
Set it up in Windows in just a couple of minutes
First thing’s first, if your motherboard has built-in Wi-Fi, turn it off in the BIOS before installing the Asus PCE-AXE59BT. You won’t need it anymore, and there’s a good chance that your PC might not work properly with both devices enabled. Windows already had a working driver for me, but you can download the driver ahead of time, just in case.
Another thing to note is that you’ll need Windows 11 to connect to 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E. You can install this card with Windows 10, but you’ll only get 5GHz Wi-Fi due to the lack of support for WPA-3, which 6GHz Wi-Fi uses most of the time and is consistent across all Wi-Fi 6E cards, not just this one. That said, if you don’t have too much Wi-Fi congestion in your home, 5GHz can still support the full 2.4Gbps, in theory.
The installation process will be very familiar to anybody who’s ever installed a new GPU in their PC.
The installation process will be very familiar to anybody who’s ever installed a new GPU in their PC. Start by finding an empty PCI-Express slot on your motherboard. I chose the bottom slot to not block any air going into the GPU. You’ll need to remove the back cover, which should be secured by a screw on top. That same screw can be used to secure the Wi-Fi card. Some cheaper cases may require you to break the metal cover out, so you might need to refer to your case documentation on how to get it out and avoid scraping it across your motherboard or its surface mount devices.
For the Bluetooth 5.2 connection, you’ll need to connect the USB 2.0 cable to your motherboard. Most modern boards will have one of these vacant, as mine did. While I didn’t specifically test Bluetooth performance, it worked fine with a DualSense controller for a Dark Souls 3 replay I’ve been on with a friend. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi portion worked fine while gaming, so I can’t blame my PVP deaths on my connection. Who’s still invading in Dark Souls 3 anyway?
At the end of the day, Windows Settings is the only app you’ll need to use with the Asus PCE-AXE59BT. If Windows doesn’t find the driver for you, install the driver from the Asus website or check for a Windows update with a wired connection.
Wireless performance
Fast enough for gigabit, and then some
My internet connection has symmetrical gigabit speeds, which top out at around 940Mbps most of the time. At 5Ghz, the AXE59BT had no trouble achieving that speed in my bedroom, where my PC typically uses 5GHz. That puts two walls between my PC and the router in the living room.
Speaking of routers, I used this card with an Acer Predator W6 Wi-Fi 6E router, Netgear Orbi RBE970S, and TP-Link Archer BE800, and it connected to each router without issue at 160MHz. For my speed tests, I used the Archer BE800 due to its massive wireless capacity, fast wired performance, and ability to disable Smart Connect to choose which band I want to use.
Switching to some file transfer tests, I saw speeds up to 1.3Gbps at 5GHz using Steam’s game transfer feature from another PC connected with a 2.5Gbps Ethernet connection to the router. At 6GHz in this location, however, speeds fell to around 300Mbps down due to a weaker signal. No matter which way you slice it, 6GHz Wi-Fi simply doesn’t have the coverage of 5GHz, even with Asus’s fancy stick-on antenna.
I moved my PC to the living room with the router to see just how much speed was available with this card at 6GHz, and I wasn’t disappointed. Ultimately, I got up to 1.9Gbps over 6GHz Wi-Fi with the ASUS PCE-AXE59BT using a file transfer between two PCs and transferring a Steam game using Steam’s game transfer feature.
In fact, transferring games from one PC to another using Steam has been one of my favorite applications for this extra speed. If your home has multiple PCs used for gaming in it, like mine does, this feature makes installation faster than most internet connections can manage while not using up extra data if you have a data cap. It also helps novice users actually utilize local networking, which can be a bit daunting to set up with Windows.
Should you buy the Asus PCE-AXE59BT?
You should buy the Asus PCE-AXE59BT if:
- You need Wi-Fi on your desktop PC
- You have a low signal with a built-in Wi-Fi card
- You want support for multi-gig wireless speeds
- You want BlueTooth on your desktop
You shouldn’t buy the Asus PCE-AXE59BT if:
- You already have a Wi-Fi 6 or 6E card installed
- You don’t have an open PCIe slot
- You’re running Windows 10 or older
When it comes down to it, I’m quite happy with the performance of the Asus PCE-AXE59BT. With my gigabit internet connection, I never felt like I was limited by my Wi-Fi speeds, and reliability was perfect for the two weeks I used the card. Underneath the Asus-branded heatsink, you get a MediaTek MT7922, a.k.a. a Filogic 330. I was also happy with the transfer speeds I could get for files, with speeds easily exceeding 1.2Gbps in my bedroom and higher in the same room as the router.
If you’ve got an older Wi-Fi 5 card, the upgrade to the PCE-AXE59BT will be worth it. There are definitely cheaper ways to get the same MediaTek module for your desktop, but the inclusion of the magnetic antenna makes it worth a bit more. Connecting antennas directly to the back of the PC means they’ll be blocked by both the computer case and the wires plugged into your PC. By getting the antennas up and out of the way, you can likely gain some performance back without even upgrading the card inside.
If you’re looking to add Wi-Fi to your PC for the first time or want to upgrade an older card, this is a solid option with support for Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E, making it a good fit for internet connections of 1Gbps or higher. While 6GHz still seems to struggle with walls, if you’re relatively close to your router, you can get Ethernet-like speeds without running a single wire.
ASUS PCE-AXE59BT
$65 $70 Save $5
The Asus PCE-AXE59BT is a powerful Wi-Fi 6E Wi-Fi adapter with an included magnetic antenna. Rocking a MediaTek MT7922 Wi-Fi module, this adapter supports connection speeds up to 2402Mbps at 5GHz and 6GHz. The magnetic antenna can also help improve your signal by getting it up higher or on the correct side of the PC case.