Asrock H270M-ITX/ac Beware Wifi Issue

[Alkoran]

I recently purchased a H270M-ITX/ac and had real trouble with the Wifi range. I had to put the pc next to the router to have signal and even then, the signal was weak. I could not even see my phone hotspot even if the phone was on the case.

I filed the form for tech support on the Asrock website and after 3 weeks they have not answered it. And it seems to be the only way to contact Asrock. So customer service sucks big balls.

Some people told me the check if the antennas were threaded all the way in, which they were. I tried to realign them many times, swapping the, etc etc. Still no luck.

So today I took the troubleshooting further and decided to remove the Wifi Module completely to check if something would cause the issue. So unscrew the assembly from the motherboard, unscrew the shield to expose the module and BINGO!
One of the antenna clip was not connected!
I was lucky enough that this connection is some sort of clip and not soldered together.
And seeing how protected is the module, that's something that I could not be responsible of. That's something that was forgotten when assembling all the motherboards components.

So not only the Customer Service of Asrock sucks but their Quality Control too!

 

[darksable]

Just throwing out there: that clip is the reference for antenna connectors, bar none. I have never seen a desktop mini-pcie wifi card that has a soldered connection rather than those clips.

They're also awful - you put one on, believe that it's in place correctly, and as soon as anything jiggles, it pops right off. I'm willing to bet that's what happened here; it wasn't caught by QC because it looked like it was on, and then as it got bumped around in shipping, it popped off.

Sorry to hear about the struggles, though. That's never fun.

 

[ejohnson]

yeah those plugs suck. Every wifi card for along time have used them. They pop off, it happens.

 

[DTN107]

I wouldn't really blame too much on Q/C on this. It could of popped off during shipment or such.

But hey. That's pretty nice it is an Intel card and not some cheapo realtek wireless card.

 

[Izzo]

I recently purchased a H270M-ITX/ac and had real trouble with the Wifi range. I had to put the pc next to the router to have signal and even then, the signal was weak. I could not even see my phone hotspot even if the phone was on the case.

I filed the form for tech support on the Asrock website and after 3 weeks they have not answered it. And it seems to be the only way to contact Asrock. So customer service sucks big balls.

Some people told me the check if the antennas were threaded all the way in, which they were. I tried to realign them many times, swapping the, etc etc. Still no luck.

So today I took the troubleshooting further and decided to remove the Wifi Module completely to check if something would cause the issue. So unscrew the assembly from the motherboard, unscrew the shield to expose the module and BINGO!
One of the antenna clip was not connected!
I was lucky enough that this connection is some sort of clip and not soldered together.
And seeing how protected is the module, that's something that I could not be responsible of. That's something that was forgotten when assembling all the motherboards components.

So not only the Customer Service of Asrock sucks but their Quality Control too!

View attachment 74884

Thank you so much Alkoran for finding and solving this problem. It turns out I had the same issue.
You saved me a good deal of hassle and now everything is working fine. Cheers!

 

[Morzy]

I love my H270m ITX/ac. It has SO many USB ports. I personally don't use the wifi much at all, but it has served me well enough (I blame my 5 year old router more) when I did.

Stuff happens. It could be much worse than something as simple as using a few fingers.

 

[Alkoran]

Glad to see it helped someone else. This wifi card is really great (when connected correctly aha); I purchased the same for my XPS 13 laptop that had problems with its Killer card that dropped the connection randomly.