How to update your laptop with a Wifi AX network card
The new Wi-Fi 6 standard is increasingly reaching more products on the market, and with it a large number of users can benefit from the incredible performance improvements of this wireless network. But if you are one of those who does not want to buy a new PC, we will show you how to update your laptop with a wifi ax network card step by step.
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Most laptops on the market that are not ultra-thin have this possibility, especially those geared towards gaming or those that are relatively thick. It's an easier process than you might think, and you'll be able to use your brand new Wi-Fi 6 router with your own PC for just $30 or less.
Why upgrade your laptop with an ax Wi-Fi network card
As with Ethernet and wired data, Wi-Fi also has its own standard and multiple versions. The most current is formally called IEEE 802.11ax, which we know more as Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi ax. Until last year or year and a half, all routers and equipment operated on the old standard, called Wi-Fi 5 or IEEE 802.11ac (5 GHz) and IEEE 802.11n (2.4 GHz).
Asus was the first manufacturer to present a router capable of operating under the new IEEE specification, more specifically the Asus RT-AX88U, and it was not until a few months later that the first devices compatible with this network began to appear thanks to the Intel Wi-Fi AX200 network card. Almost at the same time, Samsung has already implemented Wi-Fi 6 in its top-of-the-range Galaxy S10 terminals, and later the rest of the manufacturers would do the same.
Based on this, we can say that it was in 2020 when this new standard exploded, so if your laptop is older than this year, it most likely does not have Wi-Fi 6 inside. In fact, many previous generation or even new generation equipment is still on the market with reduced features to adjust the price, and they do not have Wi-Fi 6, although certainly less and less.
So for all these users, this little tutorial will make a lot of sense if you need to extract more speed from your equipment on the local network, or have simply received or bought a router with useful generation and want to take advantage of its power.
Wi-Fi 6 and its most important improvements
There will be several features or advantages that this new standard introduces for all the devices that use it, or at least that's how it should be on paper if the conditions they are the correct ones.
This translates to a theoretical speed of Wi-Fi 6 will be the antennas used from:
Of course, for now, there are only 2×2 customer cards in this standard.
Does it work with any router?
To upgrade your laptop with a wifi ax network card and you can notice the difference in performance you will need to use a router that is also capable of operating in this standard IEEE 802.11ax .
Another feature not mentioned above is that Wi-Fi 6 is backwards compatible with previous standards. This allows a Wi-Fi 6 client to connect to a Wi-Fi router no matter how old it is. Of course, the connection speed will be limited by the slowest device on the connection.
So if we have a Wi-Fi 6 card that goes to 2402 Mbps in 5 GHz 2×2, in a Wi-Fi 5 router it will be limited to 867 Mbps, or if it goes to 574 Mbps in 2.4 GHz it will be it will limit to 300 Mbps. Here, therefore, it would not make any sense to update the card, since both client and server must operate in the same standard.
Update your laptop with an ax wifi network card
Once we know all the benefits and what we must take into account, it is time to see the steps to follow to update your laptop with a card Wi-Fi network ax. It will be a not very complicated process if you dare to open your laptop or allow someone else to do it for you under your instructions.
1. Identify which network card you have installed, slot and format
Of course, before starting the task, it will be a wise decision to verify which network card our laptop has installed. If it is a model from mid-2019 or earlier, we can assume that it will not be Wi-Fi 6, but if it is later, who knows?
This process will be as trivial as going to the Windows device manager. We can find this by right-clicking on the start button and choosing that option. We must display the second tab of Network adapters to verify that one of the devices corresponds to a wireless card.
If your laptop is about 3 or 4 years old, it might have an Intel Wireless-AC 8265, 9260 or 9560. That's good news, as this card is a M.2 2230 E-Key format whose slot supports cards Wi-Fi 6 when operating both through Intel's CNVi interface. It will be essential that it has this same slot, otherwise it will not work.
In some gaming equipment such as MSI or some Acer or Gigabyte, using Wi-Fi cards gaming versions of the manufacturer Killer. Basically they are cards exactly the same as those mentioned above, only that they allow load balancing from software. The Wi-Fi 5 models would be the Killer Wireless-AC 1435, 1535, 1550 and 1550i.
If our laptop is even older and we see cards like the Intel Wireless-AC 7260, it will not have a shareable Mini PCI-E slot as it is a variant with fewer contacts and a larger size.
Be very careful with laptops with an ultra-thin or Max-Q design, since some especially small or mid-range ones have the Wi-Fi chip directly integrated into the board, and consequently it will not be possible to exchange it. Although in the absence of identifying data, we will discover this when we open the equipment in question.
4. Best Wi-Fi ax cards to buy
Now it is the turn to buy, if we do not already have it, the Wi-Fi 6 card. This will be a fairly simple task, since there are many online stores in where to buy one of these models.
As of the date of this tutorial, it's not like we have too many models to choose from. Basically there will be two available from the blue giant, the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 and the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 update whose difference in principle lies in updating the bluetooth from 5.0 to 5.1. On Killer's part we find the Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 gaming-oriented model which will be the most recommended of all.
Genuine Intel AX200NGW Wireless Card, Wi-Fi 6 WiFi Module 11AX 2 x 2 Dual-Band MU-MIMO Wireless Card with Bluetooth 5.0 Internal WiFi Adapter Compatible with Windows 10 64bit, M.2 / ✅ Do not use on a motherboard containing one Intel 9560 CNVi.MQUPIN Dual Band Wireless Network Card AX201NGW 2.4Gbps 802.11ax Wireless Intel AX201 WiFi Card Bluetooth 5.0 for Windows 10, 64-bit, Google Chrome OS, Linux (kernel system 5.2 above)30.99 EUR Killer - AX1650 Wi-Fi 6 Module - Dual Band, 2x2 Wi-Fi 6/11AX, Bluetooth 5.1, M.2/NGFF (Gig+)46.02 EURLast update on 01-2022-15
If we want an even more adjusted price, we would have to go to other stores like Aliexpress or the like to buy the Chinese versions that will necessarily have the Intel chip inside.
2. Open laptop and warranty
When you already have your brand new network card purchased and at home, it's time to upgrade your laptop with an ax wifi network card.
When opening the laptop, it is necessary to take into account that if it is less than two years old, it will still be under warranty. This means that if we remove the back cover, we will automatically lose this warranty. If you have more time, then we can proceed relatively calmly.
Here each manufacturer is different, and not all open with the same ease. But what is quite clear is that in current laptops all the hardware will be accessible from the bottom, without the need to remove keyboards or anything like that, as was the case with many older HP-style models.
That being said, it is normal to proceed by removing each and every one of the screws in the lower area with a Phillips screwdriver.
After this, you should ideally have a suction cup to stick to a corner and gently pull to separate the tabs that hold the casing together.
If we do not have a suction cup or if the surface is rough and does not stick, then in the end we will have to use some very fine flat-tipped element to insert it and use a twist of the wrist to lever it to try to separate the elements. This is usually more problematic than the suction cup because we damage the edges of the equipment.
We should always look for the place where we think the union is weakest, for example in the corners, or near the connection ports. Or even on the back of the grills where the damage would be less noticeable. There is no fixed rule of course, but if you don't have enough confidence, you always have that handyman friend to blame if something breaks.
3. Remove previous network card and disconnect antennas
After the previous step we will have overcome the most tense moment of updating your laptop with an ax wifi network card. Now all that remains is to calmly find the location of the M.2 slot where the old network card is installed.
The most normal thing would be to find it on one of the sides near the storage unit, although it will be easily identifiable as it is exactly the same as the screenshot we left above.
The important and fundamental thing is not to confuse the M.2 E-Key slot used by current CNVi network cards with the M.2 M-Key used by storage units. We also leave you a visual comparison to differentiate them.
The extraction procedure is very simple, since we only have to remove the screw that fixes the card to the PCB and then carefully extract it.
At the end you will probably have two very small wired connectors that correspond to the two extension antennas. We must not pull like crazy, and it is better to make a slight lever with a flat screwdriver so as not to deform the circular head. Of course we will need these antennas to connect them to the new network card.
5. Install the new card
With the slot free, we will do the reverse process, and we will place the new card in the slot. Always make sure that the specification sticker faces the upper face, although this will be obvious from the type of slot and the only possible installation position.
Now we fix it with the screw and again we place the extension antennas in the circular connectors. If we do not do this, the coverage of the card will be much less than with antennas, and at a distance greater than 1 m it will no longer reach the router. Therefore it is essential that they are well connected
It is recommended that each cable go to the correct connector, since you will see that one has a black arrow with the inscription Main and another white one called Aux.
It's time to close the laptop and start it to see that everything is correct and you access the operating system without problems.
6. Configuring a Wi-Fi ax card in Windows
After updating your laptop with a Wi-Fi ax network card, one last step remains, which is to configure the network card in our operating system. And it is that for now, Windows by default does not seem to automatically install the drivers for these network cards.
You will have to do it manually, but it will be as simple as downloading the drivers from the official Intel website. Here we will download the last two drivers from the list for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
These will also be valid for Killer network cards as they are based on the same chip. Although additionally these cards support load balancing, so it would be advisable to install the Killer Control Center 2.0 software for them.
After restarting the equipment, we will be able to use our new Wi-Fi 6 network card as normal, just installed with our router to acquire maximum speed.
Conclusions and other upgrade options instead of Wifi AX
In this way you have just updated your laptop with a wifi ax network card and as you can see, the most critical thing, so to speak, is the fact that open the equipment without breaking anything and know how to identify whether or not your laptop is compatible with these new cards. The rest is quite simple, needing only to make a change of components.
This procedure can also be done on a desktop PC as long as it has a motherboard with an M.2 E-Key slot or built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. Once again, the type of slot must be identified and differentiated with the M.2 of the PCIe SSDs.
If it's a Wi-Fi board already installed, the slot is inside an enclosure right on the rear port panel. The change process will be exactly the same, except that here it must be taken into account that, if the board did not come with Wi-Fi but prepared for it, it will not include the external antenna, so it must be purchased separately.
WayinTop 2 Set 8dBi 2.4GHz 5GHz Wireless Network WiFi RP-SMA Female Antenna + 20cm IPEX to RP-SMA Male Pigtail Cable for NGFF/M.2 WiFi/WLAN/3G/4G Modules (NGFF)14.99 EURLast update on 2022-01-18
And if we don't have M.2 slots, then we must use a PCIe x1 slot and a dedicated network card. Some of the best will be the following:
TP-LINK Archer TX3000E AX3000 PCI Express Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.0 Adapter with Dual Antennas, Intel AX200 Desktop PCIe Network Interface Card, Low Profile Bracket Included Smoother Experience 75% Less Latency Ensures Real-time Gameplay ultra sensitive57.90 EUR Hommie WiFi Network Card, WiFi 6 Wireless Dual Band 3000Mbps (5G-2400Mbps+2.4G-574Mbps) WiFi Card PCIe 802.11 Bluetooth 5.0, Network Card with 2x6DB Antennas, for Windows10,Linux5.1+,Chrome OSLast update on 2022-01-18
Now we leave you with some interesting tutorials and guides on networks
We hope the tutorial has been useful, now it's your turn to put it into practice.
