So I recently moved in to a large apartment building. I have no way to get ethernet to my desktop...

So I recently moved in to a large apartment building. I have no way to get ethernet to my desktop. It's an older apartment with shitty wiring, don't want to use powerline ethernet.
It's also a little bit of an older desktop, the only slot I have available is a regular PCI slot. I've been using a USB 3.0 wifi card for a while now, but desu I'm sick of how unreliable it is. What are my options for decent PCI wifi cards? I want something that at least has decent 5ghz speeds.

Do you have coax access in the rooms? You could try MoCA.

I do, I'll look in to it. Only coax I have near the router is the one the modem is hooked up to, would that be a problem?

>I have no way to get ethernet to my desktop.
I often hear people say this and it's basically never true. Where is your router, where is your desktop, and what is stopping you from running some flat cat5e against the walls in a non-intrusive, totally-reversible, reasonably-subtle manner?

Nope

It'd be a decently long run. How fast does flat Cat5e degrade? I'd imagine pretty quick without the twists. I'd have to run it around the length of the living room and over two door frames to get it to my room. It'd need to be ran along the baseboards, the ceilings in the living room are way too high. Not sure what I'd use to adhere it that wouldn't damage the paint, and we're also talking about a lot of sharp bends that won't be good for the signal either.

First: I'm currently using 98 feet of cheapo flat "cat6" with zero issues. Ethernet just isn't as temperamental as you think (unless you run 10gbit I guess).
Second: If you're worried about signal integrity and then decide the solution is to use wi-fi, you have things completely backwards. Even if it's marginal or completely out of spec, a cabled setup is realistically going to be far more stable and reliable than wifi (especially if the signal is weak enough that a USB receiver isn't enough).

LOL, a poorfag like you who has a PC with only PCI slots in 2018 can't afford a place where cat5 would degrade over the distances available
It's literary a 100 meters

This could work. The wiring in this apartment is a real shit show though, now that I think about it we had to have Comcast run a new line to the breaker room because we were previously connected over a 300+ foot run of RS6. They ran it up the outside wall and punched it through to the modem in the living room. I wonder if that'll cause any problems, I haven't tried to use any of the other coax connections since this happened. Going to have to figure out a way to test that, but I like this idea. Thanks.

I'm not going to pretend I have a ton of money, but I said it is the only available slot, not that the PC doesn't have PCI-E. They're just all in use.

This is definitely going to be more than a 100 foot run though. Bear with me for a minute, I'm going to try to go measure.

I see you're point though, even if it isn't up to spec it's gotta be better than wifi. Just give me a minute.

Kill yourself faggot. No man would make such a fuss over laying down a cable. Fucking man up or drink bleach like the emo girl you are.

Yeah bro, real men just go out and buy the spool without measuring. Also, fuck planning in general. Where do you work at, btw? Burger King?

I run a 100ft cable from my living room to my bedroom for my PC. I put a bunch of command hooks on the ceiling and run it up there. The cable is white so it's not noticeable.

#1: Just run the fucking cable.
#2: PCI maxes out at 533 MB/s with some latency delays.
#3: USB 3.0 hits 625 MB/s with less latency
#4: Media Converters exist. If you can find "less conspicuous" cable that's coaxial or fiber that can span the distance
#5: Run the fucking cable.

I am a programer and I had to lay down ethernet cables in my house before except that I planed for it and went with it instead of writing a facebook post on Sup Forums.

if it's an older building it should have land line for telephone no?
if so, see if you can get DSL to your apartment. they may have to send a technician to test the line for distance, signal quality, etc.

if you get DSL, they'll give you a router most likely with wi-fi, but if not you can get a wifi box and connect it to the router. remember to secure it so neighbors don't leech your connection.

Outside wall

>Yeah bro, real men just go out and buy the spool without measuring.

Easy, leaves extra for wiring locations, no disadvantage IRL which is why I did it.

OP has internet already (coax cable). He's looking for the best way to hook up his computer to his router.

usb dongles require CPU host based drivers, adding latency, while a PCI card will handle network traffic in hardware. also if connectivity is his issue, PCI cards can output more wattage. I've used both, PCI wifi cards are utterly superior.

If you have a wall between, just can always cut a hole and put in jacks on either side. That might shorten your run and make it less noticeable.

>only have a regular pci slot
>usb 3.0

What the fuck kind of motherboard do you have?

He already said that is the only OPEN slot, not the only slot.

It doesn't matter if its flat or not, if its specified as cat5e the standard says it will support 1Gb/s at 300ft.