20 Best Mini Pci E Wireless Card (2023 Updated)

I installed this in a Toshiba Satellite S855-S5382. I got this because my university updated their network and suddenly the wifi was invisible to me. I figured might as well try replacing the card since my old realtek card was only single band and the ability to use 5GHz wifi was appealing.

It worked right away. I still went ahead and got the newest drivers from intel. I then noticed I didn’t even have the option for bluetooth, so I took my laptop apart again and put tape over pin 51 like everyone was saying to do.

Sure enough, worked like a charm. I’d already installed the newest bluetooth drivers so now everything works great.

Used two to replace the Wi-Fi cards in a Dell E6520 and Dell XPS15Z because the originals could not work correctly with new high speed router. Win10 recognized them but still had to get the latest driver from Intel for full functionality.

Also had to disable the separate Bluetooth in the E6520. Will eventually take that separate item out of the laptop, but disabling it in Device Manager works for now. Both 7260’s work great including the Bluetooth.

These are made in China. So were the original equipment ones in the Dell Laptops.

So chances are if you’re looking at these you already know what they’re for, how to install them, and how Intel’s model numbering system works. Go away. If you don’t though, and your laptop of small form-factor PC just has generally rubbish WiFi reception – something like this may be your answer.

The 7260 is one of those well-trodden, tried-and-tested solutions – you plug it in, connect up your antennae, install a driver (not even necessary after Windows 7) and away it goes – Intel-quality dual-band WiFi (in a dual-band ready machine, of course) plus added Bluetooth.

Be aware that, of course, there’s multiple formats for these little trinkets. This one’s called Mini PCI Express, or mini PCI-E. There’s also the older mini PCI (much longer) and the newer NVMe or M.

2 (frustratingly, about the same size). MAKE SURE YOU BUY THE RIGHT ONE. They’re not interchangeable. Also make sure you buy a card with the right number of antenna connections for your machine. You can see from the picture that the 7260 has connections for two antennas, A and B.

You can happily connect one, but you’ll lose either the 5GHz band completely or range reliability (depending on how your machine’s antennae are configured). The 7xxx series have been superseded by the 8xxx series, but remain the easiest-sourced Windows 10-compatible WiFi upgrade for machines with mini PCI-E connectivity.

Another pitfall here is that occasionally, big OEMs (HP, Dell, Lenovo etc. ) will ‘lock’ their machines to only work with select adapters. You’ll need to read up on this a bit more, as I could write a thesis on it.

Be aware though that if you grab one of these, install it properly and it doesn’t work – you may be experiencing this ‘feature’. A lot of these machines do show you a BIOS-level warning if you’ve got an unsupported WiFi card installed.

At thirty bucks or under, a quick, solid internal fix for that machine that has hopeless wireless. Recommended.

The card was in great shape and simply just works. Installed in an old dell inspiron 13z. WIN10 driver update required. Now using 5GHz wifi. Signal is strong and works well. Have not tried the bluetooth yet.

Good packaging by the seller. The included screwdriver, adapter and extra screws were a nice touch.

The card was purchased to replace the existing wifi card in my laptop, that only supported up to 802. 11n speeds. The product arrived packaged in an antistatic bag along with the installation screws – very thoughtful! Hardware installation is as easy as it is on your specific device, so can’t comment on that.

Device drivers could be found on the intel website, and they work out of the box. Wifi works in 802. 11ac, bluetooth works as it should, no artifacts noticeable in sound transmission between the card and my bluetooth audio receiver.

Wifi speed is very quick, keeping in mind that your antennas will be a limiting factor in signal strength. Overall, the software side of the installation was very easy. Websites open noticeably faster than on the old n standard card.

Connecting to my NAS i’m able to reach over 20 MB (that’s megabytes, so over 160 megabits) upload speed at 5 metres from the router. A faster router with a stronger reception would probably result in faster speeds.

I don’t know the quality of the internal antennas on my ASUS N76 laptop, so I can’t comment on that. I only just installed the product so I can’t say for it’s longevity, but it seems very promising. Overall I am very satisfied and would recommend it.

Just remember, that any speed claims should be taken with a grain of salt as it, again, depends on your specific setup on what speeds you can achieve.

This will be a very niche issue for people but: while not advertising itself as Linux compatible and not including any non-Windows information in the driver CD this product uses an Intel Wireless-AC 7265 chipset which works with the standard iwlwifi driver.

The Bluetooth functionality works via a USB-F cable attaching to the motherboard; there are instructions (and a cable) in the box and I found a compatible port right near the PCIe slot. Bluetooth worked out of the box as well as any Linux Bluetooth does, I have no device-specific complaints there.

I won’t knock a star for it but I would have appreciated a bracket screw to be included – the aerials are quite large so if only held in by the PCIe slot it’s a bit fragile.

This was a replacement Wi-Fi card for one that was not working very well. In addition, it provided Bluetooth which my computer did not have. I have ATT Fiber with Gigabite service, and with my old card I was barely able to stay connected, and when I did, I never got more than 10 MB down, and 2 MB up.

I now routinely connect with between 175 and 350 MB down, and 125 and 300 MB up. I was also looking for a Bluetooth solution and thought I would have utilize one of my external USB devices for that. However, this card has Bluetooth too.

My computer had an internal USB available that the Wi-Fi card connected to and provides excellent Bluetooth connectivity. I am very happy with this device and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to upgrade.

Happy Trails – TK937.

My wifi speeds are pretty good with this card. Easy to install and setup. I had to install a compatibility driver which was simple through the manufacturer’s website. I only wish the included instructions explain how to download the driver but it only comes with a CD version.

I would not not recommend this card if you have a Fractal case since the mounting bracket does not completely line up with the card’s mounting bracket, but it still works perfectly fine without being screwed down.

This adapter can have problems connecting to a 5G network, which I discovered after hours and hours of trying to get it to connect. It could not connect to my 5G network, and couldn’t even see it, but my phone and tablet could.

Also, this adapter is relatively old (perhaps 2014-2015). The problem arises because some of the 5G network channels are what are called DFS 5G channels. This adapter cannot “see” or connect with those channels.

As such, if your router is set to a DFS channel, or if your router is set to automatically choose a channel and it chooses a DFS channel, it won’t connect. And it won’t even see the SSID for your 5G network.

And that is the case even if you manually enter the SSID into your adapter/wireless software. You can also search online for a list of which 5g channels are DFS channels, and you can look in your router to see if your 5g network is using one of those DFS 5g channels [or perhaps it is set to automatic (as many are) and set itself to a DFS 5g channel].

When I manually changed the 5g channel in the router to a non-DFS channel, the adapter saw the 5g network SSID and connected. So it is fixable, manually, but less than optimal because you have to figure out which channel to pick, and which channel is best in your area, and some channels are faster than others.

And many of those issues could be resolved automatically by the adapter if the adapter worked with DFS channels. Also, this problem could cause your adapter to have and then lose a connection if the router is set to automatic and changes the channel to a DFS channel.

And yes, I updated the driver for the adapter, but I found that the newest driver from ASUS is from 2015 and it still does not see DFS channels. I would have sent it back but my 2. 4 g network is working well.

Bottom line, buy a different adapter. One that works with DFS 5g channels.

Received: 04-APR-2019 OS: Windows 10 Home 1809 (Build: 17763. 404) Motherboard: Gigabyte Z270XP-SLI I purchased this card as a replacement for a Asus PCE-AC55BT which had recently started having intermittent issues.

Before installing the new card I went to the Asus website to get the drivers (the provided CD doesn’t do me any good as I don’t have an optical drive handy). The website has a utility to download, but under driver is says that a driver is NOT needed as the card is compatible with the built in Windows 10 drivers.

Cool. But, I downloaded the utility just in case. After installing the card was detected and a Broadcom driver was installed by Windows. a driver from 2013. Using the Broadcom driver I was only able to get ~15Mbps.

I was expecting ~300Mbps. (My old card got ~250Mbps but the PCE56 has a nicer antenna so I was hoping for more. ) Obviously this was no good so I installed the utility. Turns out (contrary to what is stated on the Asus website) the utility does have a proper Asus driver.

But after installing I couldn’t get my card to connect to my WiFi router. It would connect for a few seconds then disconnect. At on point I rebooted my router and everything worked. for about a minute.

then we went back to the constant connect/disconnect state. I banged my head against it for a while, even changed PCIe slots, but nothing seemed to work. I couldn’t get the card to stay connected. Finally just as a random attempt, I reinstalled the utility, but this time instead of the utility and drivers I opted only for the drivers.

Suddenly everything started working. And, I was able to get my full 500Mbps, sweet.

The driver support for this card is absolutely terrible. I repeatedly contacted ASUS support and requested an updated driver to be uploaded ASAP and after nearly a year they finally did. However the driver does not even fix the problems associated with 802.

11ac and I spent nearly 20 hours on the phone with them over the course of a year guiding them on how to rectify the issue. ASUS creates quality motherboards GPU’s and other components, even routers but this wireless adapter is horrifyingly unreliable.

802. 11ac does not work whatsoever and 802. 11n constantly crashes, so I am back to my Ethernet connection. On top of the terrible adapter the customer service ASUS used to be incredible for seems to have gone the way of the dodo.

Constant lies and patronizing even though I knew exponentially more than their representatives who just lied and committed to broken promises of support and calling back just to get me off the phone.

Dear ASUS, I love your company for your motherboards, GPU’s, laptops and routers. I am a brand loyalist. But I kid you not, if you do not release a proper fix for this adapters connectivity issues I will take my loyalty to another brand and purchase all components from them instead of yourselves.

You should not patronize your customers with senseless small talk from your representatives and when a service report is generated your IT/Tech department should be responsive to its data regardless of their personal communication with customer service.

I honestly do not expect to hear from you but I hope this review will shed some light on your company right now and maybe even influence it to become what it used to be. If I do hear from you please do not tell me to contact your customer support for help, they are no help.

They know nothing. Either get me a direct line to someone important or don’t communicate with me at all and just fix the problem by updating the drivers to focus on this adapters issues with 802. 11ac connectivity because your new drivers still do NOT work.

Maybe then I can renew my faith in what used to be some of the best components the market had to offer. Thank you.

I have a Lenovo X1 Carbon 4th gen that was dropping WiFi connections and just had generally slow internet in general. After some research online, it looked like a good idea to upgrade the WiFi card. Although this one isn’t recommended by Lenovo for my laptop, I figured it try it.

WOW, what a difference! WiFi is actually stable and much faster now. For the price it is well worth the upgrade. Note, you do lose vPro capability if you install this card. It doesn’t come back either, not a problem for me, but be aware of this.

Also, it works with NO post errors and no whitelist bypass at least for the X1 Carbon 3rd and 4th gen laptops.

This WiFi card was used to upgrade my fiance’s Qualcomm WiFi card in her Lenovo Thinkpad E485 laptop. The throughput and connectivity range nearly doubled on Intel compared to Qualcomm. Very good upgrade, well worth the money.

Bluetooth 5. 0 works without any issues as well.

This component was an excellent replacement for my Asus laptop the original Wi-Fi card that it came with was having issues in regards of penetrating through the walls of my house to get to the router.

As a result of that I have to use an usb wi-Fi adapter to resolve that issue. Since I discovered it is possible to upgrade my laptop’s Wi-Fi card so I decided it was time to replace the Wi-Fi card that my laptop came with and upgrade the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth at the same time while I’m at that, so I did that and after replacing the Wi-Fi card the issue was resolved and the new Wi-Fi card was able to penetrate through the walls of my house without any issues and it got to the router without any issues and at this point i do not need to use the USB Wi-Fi adapter at this point.

I wish It had more range, as for the Bluetooth it works as well with my current Bluetooth devices as well. Yes I would recommend it.

I was using an “N” version of the 7260 and had nothing but connection issues (using an Asus K60IJ laptop). Yes I tried many of the band-aids and fixes found on the various sites including Intel. Tried various drivers, all to no avail.

Maybe it’s in relation to my hardware? But I simply was tired of the constant disconnects and wireless “freezes” so well noted with the 7260. Popped this card in, uninstalled all previous drivers, installed the latest fresh copy 15.

x. x. , away she goes. Has operated flawlessly so far and no through-put issues.

I couldn’t find antennas and RF cables on Newegg, so ordered these from Netgate. The antennas were relatively expensive, but you should consider that your antennas are going to dictate a big chunk of your performance.

I initially ordered the wrong RF cable, and had to eat that cost. I ended up getting the 6″ RF cables from Adafruit. The cable going to the furthest antenna was barely long enough on the Shuttle DS61.

An 8″ cable would have been much better.

Packing. This is the emptiest box from newegg I ever received. Not complaining, just making fun. The device in very small. It is half-size the 3945ABG, so the spring clip designed to hold the 3945 in place does not reach the new card.

This is not a problem, since PCIe slot is tight enough. Besides one might use a piece of double-sided sticky tape or velcro to secure it even further. Inspirion Antenae cables are a bit too short — they a meant for 3945 card, which is twice as tall — but they reach, though you have to be careful.

Attach both cables before inserting the card into PCIe slot.

I have been using this card for several weeks now, and the standard Linux kernel iwlwifi driver (with Ubuntu 16. 04) is stable with no issues or quirks. Performance-wise, this card supports 802. 11ac in 2×2 mode and sustains a connection to my WiFi access point at 520-866Mbps (the maximum that my AP supports) while in the same room, and 234-390 when in the farthest corner of my flat.

I usually sustain 30-40MB/s transfers to/from a local NFS share, which is within range of expectations. While this is no longer the newest in Intel’s range, it is probably your best bet if you need a mini PCIe card as newer models are typically only found as NGFF cards.

I bought this to replace the full height mini PCIe card card in my Dell Vostro 1500. As this card is half-height, you will need to be aware that this product does not include an adaptor, but they are cheap and simple to fit.

If you are using this in a full height slot, you might also have insufficient slack in the existing antenna cables to reach the terminals of the new card. You can buy “pigtails” (not included in this product) to extend the existing cables, but you might also be able to tweak your cables to reach – check before buying.

Bought 7260HMW to replace 2230BNHMW in laptop as it provides 802. 11AC and Intel no longer provide updated drivers for the old card. My ASUS laptop doesn’t use a white list in the BIOS so there were no issues and it is a physical direct replacement.

Drivers were updated without any problems and it all works as expected. Only slight issue is that the antennae in the laptop are only designed to work at 2. 4GHz so the signal is likely to be a bit weaker at 5GHz but it seems to work ok.

Obviously you have to check your laptop has the correct slot, but this chipset is available for both this older mini-pci-e version and the newer M2/pci-e so pick the right one & you’re away. Being Intel you know you won’t have driver or compatibility problems.

Fantastic upgrade for my 1st Gen i5 laptop to make use of our new AC router, triple the performance of the dual band N600 Intel card it replaced, which also made the OEM generic N300 card look like junk.

Copying stuff to/from my NAS is almost like hard wired gigabit now.

I bought this thinking I could plug it in, download drivers and have working WiFi and Bluetooth. But no, because nothings that simple anymore. Make sure if you want this to work you have the proper antennas required for it work.

Otherwise good quality for the price and -should- work well.

The original WIFI card in a Acer Aspire One 521 is very slow. It also will not connect to the newer modems. I plugged in this replacement and Windows 10 automatically installed it. Now I can watch streamed internet video with no jerkiness.

It even has blue-tooth, but I have not tried that yet. Fantastic!.

Very good product, same as the original in my laptop, it fit perfectly, but, unfortunately, the BIOS on my laptop (Lenovo B590) doesn’t recognize it as a genuine part and refuses to boot. Nevertheless, my problem is not the card, but the fact that the manufacturer of the laptop doesn’t allow other hardware than its own.

So, check if that is also the case for you before you buy!.

I get a strong connection with this adapter. It doesn’t make the internet speeds faster unfortunately, but that’s more on my provider. This little card is great. I wish it had Bluetooth too, but you can’t have everything.

My advice is if you can find another adapter that includes Bluetooth for around ten dollars more, it’s worth the investment. I regret not doing so, and now I either have to buy another adapter or use up a usb slot for that adapter.

One reviewer listed the chipset in this device as RTL 8192, which for a linux user is right on. I found after the cmd. (as root) ” lspci -nnv | less ” to my surprise the details were of a Ralink 5392 chipset.

While an easy fix is available in the. deb RT 5390 file, and I happen to like Ralink chipsets, the producers of these devices could easily list the chipset in the product description. The chipset drives ALL aspects of the device, and when vending a pci-e (x1) product that standard of revelation in product descriptions needs to be the norm, not the exception.

It wasn’t easy finding a wifi card of the interface I needed that had a known chipset manufacturer other than Realtek, but this is the one I found. Most brands don’t show that spec sheet on their listing with a chipset ID included.

But after the Realtek Linux driver security bug became public knowledge, I went on the look for a new card with a different chipset, manufacturer. And this was the first one I found with a verification that it had a Ralink chipset instead.

I purchased this because I got tired of my USB wireless adapter not performing well. The one I bought had an issue with being stuck in USB2 even though it’s advertised as USB3. This capped my download speeds at ~300 Mbps, not very ideal considering I’m pay for 400 Mbps internet service.

I decided to go with PCI-E to eliminate the issues associated with USB dongles. Even with the router 20+ feet away and behind at least one wall, I can achieve almost maximum link speed of ~800 Mbps on the 5 Ghz band.

Speed tests always show this is downloading at ~430 Mbps, the same as if connected via Ethernet. Of course Ethernet is superior than wireless, but it’s amazing that modern wireless speeds are approaching gigabit speed.

The best drivers are actually the Broadcom drivers installed by Windows when first plugged in. I would stay away from any ASUS drivers found online. The ones I found online caused this to have terrible performance, with link speed limited to ~200 Mbps.

Not very ideal considering this can perform 800+ Mbps. Driver rollback instantly fixed the performance issue. On most full-size ATX boards, the smaller PCI-E slot this fits in is right in between the two larger PCI-E x16 slots.

Contrary to what another reviewer said, this DOES fit with 2 large modern graphics cards. I have 2x Nvidia 980s in SLI format with a large aftermarket cooler (EVGA ACX 2. 0 coolers) and this fits in between them.

It’s snug, but it fits. After installing this, there’s not much space between, maybe 5 mm between the adapter and graphics cards.

Now that it is working i have no problems, but it was an unpleasant process getting there. I tried every driver i could get my hands on, but it would either not see the 5Ghz wifi, or see it but not be able to connect.

This device uses a common chipset, so you can drive yourselft crazy looking for drivers because there are a million of them out there. So here’s how i Fixed it: 1. Uninstall the Asus/whatever WiFi driver if you have already installed any, power down the system and remove the card 1.

on a Gigabyte MB, go into the BIOS 2. Go to “Miscellaneous Settings” 3. Change “Max Link Speed” from “Auto” to “Gen 3”. Note: this option could be called something like “PCI speed” or something like that.

4. Save changes, power down, and install card. 5. Both the default Windows 10 driver and the driver from Asus should work now. Don’t install the Asus network utitlity, just the driver. It was really buggy for me and doesn’t really give you any additional features that make it worth it.

So, changing the BIOS PCI setting was mentioned by another reviewer, but they said it had to do with them having two graphics cards. I only have one GPU, and my PCI settings were called something else so it was hard to nail this one down.

I kinda feel bad for deducting 2 stars for this, but if you google “PCE-56 5Ghz”, you’ll see a million posts from people having this exact problem, and Asus doesn’t give any information on their website regarding how to solve it.

It’s clearly a common issue with a pretty simple fix, so it seems childish to not put it in a FAQ. Also, if you are looking at this card, be aware that it is several years old and there are newer options for the same price that also come with built in Bluetooth.

In hindsight, i wish i had known that.

Works great, the antennas are a real plus. I had an extremely small USB adapter that just couldn’t draw the router’s signal threw a ceiling. So, I tried this adapter and my speed went from 6 to 22. Plus, it comes with two brackets, which my smaller size desktop required the smaller one and after switching two screws it was a simple swap and works perfectly.

Worth it!.

This was a fantastic upgrade for my Dell E6400 laptop. It gave it screaming fast wifi and added Bluetooth to boot! I cannot recommend this any higher than 10 stars. lol. I was shocked at the difference it made in my wifi speed by now connecting to an AC 5Hgz wifi signal.

Super easy to install in my Dell Lattitude E6440 laptop. Didn’t have bluetooth now it does with this card that is has both bluetooth and wireless ac. Had wireless n card originally now it’s upgraded to ac with this one card swap.

Worked great with my older laptop. Had to flash a custom bios to get rid of the whitelist on my laptop, but that is not the cards fault. Got 600+mbps download speed testing (have gigabit internet). Windows 10 recognized it right away.

I went in to Micro Center to get a wi-fi adapter for my ASUS Z270-A motherboard, because I didn’t have the means to connect my motherboard through ethernet. The staff helped me pick out two, and recommended the more expensive one, which I was a bit skeptical of at the time.

However, I decided to trust them and figured I could always return it if needed. Unsure of how it would work, I connected the ASUS AX3000 PCE-AX58BT WiFi 6 Dual Band PCIe Wireless Adapter w/ Bluetooth 5.

0 to my motherboard, and it worked seamlessly. It was super easy to use! I had another motherboard I needed it for and ended up buying two at the time, and it worked flawlessly for both of them. I highly recommend this product to anyone who needs a wi-fi adapter for their motherboards whether it’s for mining or gaming.

They work great and I will purchase more in the future, if I need them. The product also came with an installation CD, but I didn’t have a way to use the CD and was worried the software wasn’t going to work.

Once I plugged it in, it worked fine and didn’t seem to need to install any drivers. Thank you Micro Center employees for recommending this product to me! I really appreciate your help.

I installed this to a computer in a bedroom with an ASUS M2N-32 SLI Wireless Motherboard. I have had that computer since 2005 or 2006, but it has always been fast to boot and operate, so I still like it.

The old Wireless G (50 MBPS capable) it came with still works fine, but I have had Wireless A capable access points in my home for years (ASUS AC5300 dual band with dual band AC3100s set up as repeaters).

I also have two computers using the older ASUS PCE- AC68 adapters. All work perfectly with high download and upload speeds. Typical speeds in operation using the older PCE- AC68 adapters run from 200 – 600 MBPS with their larger three antenna magnetic bases.

Internet page loading is instantaneous on my end unless the site visited is having a problem. Using the new ASUS PCE-AX58BT, my typical speeds are 200-900 MBPS. I also like the smaller footprint of the two antenna magnetic base.

It matches the old 2008 Antec Sonata Piano Black tower case perfectly (I upgraded this motherboard to so many years ago) and sits to the top rear of the tower with a strong attachment that doesn’t scratch the tower case finish.

Again, page loading is excellent. Windows 10 updates are always fast in all my Wireless A computers where any previous Wireless G slowed them – sometimes to very irritatingly slow. As you can imagine, watching Internet movies anywhere in my home has never been a problem.

I have also had Spectrum high speed Internet for many years. The PCE-AX58BT Bluetooth connection also works no less than expected. I use the old Logitech DiNovo keyboard at this older computer and I simply removed its long Bluetooth adapter and connected the keyboard to the PCE-AX58BT adapter.

Range is excellent between the two just as it was before using the old Logitech adapter. I did have to use a wired mouse temporarily to make the PC to Bluetooth keyboard connection. Large downloads between my networked home computers never take long at all.

The PCE-AX58BT comes with full instructions, although I didn’t require them. Installation was simply installing the card to a vacant PCI-e motherboard slot and turning on the computer with Windows 10.

Windows 10 downloaded the correct drivers instantly. This is just another fine ASUS product in keeping with all my ASUS purchases through the years. None have ever failed my expectations. Note: I also added a new ASUS USB-BT500 Bluetooth adapter to another Windows 10 computer in my kitchen that had no Bluetooth, although it has a touchscreen monitor.

This allowed me to add a Bluetooth mouse so I could avoid using the touchscreen. That tiny ASUS 5. 0 USB adapter also works perfectly.

This product uses the Intel AX200 chipset. If your motherboard has the right M. 2 key, then it is cheaper to directly buy the AX200 desktop kit and save a PCIe slot. Otherwise, you would need an adapter board to use the AX200 kit, and it is easier to use this product instead.

Out of the box, it worked with default Windows and Ubuntu drivers, making for fairly minimal setup. Wi-Fi has been fast, and I have not seen any issues there. However, Bluetooth occasionally struggles to connect to a device.

In my experience, it always connects, but it might take a few seconds longer than you expect. Overall, the product works well and meets expectations.

I purchased this card completely aware of the waking from sleep issues others were having. However, the waking from sleep issues were really getting on my nerves! Thought I would be OK with just restarting the computer everytime I walked away from it, but it just wasn’t doing it for me.

After some research and trial and error. The key to solving the Waking from sleep for me was to turn off the Power Management option in Windows “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”.

I turned this off and now my computer wakes up and is ready to use! After fixing a couple glitches getting the drivers installed and Fixing the Waking from Sleep issue, this has been a good card to extend the life of my completely obsolete laptop To those that are having issues installing the drivers in Windows Vista or 7, remember to open and run them using “Troubleshoot compatibility” I gave it 4 stars because it’s low price and that I was able to resolve it’s issues Dell Inspiron 6000 Pentium(R) M 1.

60 Ghz 1. 5 GBRAM Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit.

So the card shows it is REV 2 of this model, which uses the Atheros 9002 series chip (AR9223 printed on chip), the old REV 1 seems to have used the Atheros 5416 chip (5008 series). Problem is, when I boot my laptop, the chip sometimes reports itself as the 9223, and sometimes as the 5008 – which it won’t work.

So I have to reboot several times until it reports itself correctly. Laptop is a Gateway MX6422 which had a Broadcom 4318 54G previously installed, OS: XP SP3 Media ED. So far tech support is not helpful but is attempting to fix the issue (tech support is in Asia or does not understand English well).

So the card shows it is REV 2 of this model, which uses the Atheros 9002 series chip (AR9223 printed on chip), the old REV 1 seems to have used the Atheros 5416 chip (5008 series). Problem is, when I boot my laptop, the chip sometimes reports itself as the 9223, and sometimes as the 5008 – which it won’t work.

So I have to reboot several times until it reports itself correctly. Problem happens both under Linux and Windows. Laptop is a Gateway MX6445 which had a Broadcom 4318 54G previously installed.

My unit did not work “out of the box” in my Acer Aspire 5552g but after some research I found out how to make it work! Some may consider using a “hacked BIOS” in-lieu pin covering to make it work but that comes at a risk of bricking your laptop or getting malware from shady websites.

The option I took was electrical tape. All I had to do was tape up pins 46 and 51. This makes perfect sense for my laptop. Pin 46 controls Bluetooth LED which my laptop doesn’t have. Pin 51 controls W_Disable#2 which, according to the whitepaper, “Resets the whole BT core while asserted.

” That one sounds like it’s only needed if the module were to be “hot-plugged” but since it’s PCI-E and the laptop doesn’t support hot-plugging I taped that one off as well. I’m probably wrong about that but it works for me so far.

To each their own! Taping pin 51 may be unnecessary but it works and this whole experiment took me about 2 hours so I’m happy with it as is 🙂 FYI, pins 36 and 38 control the BT USB. If you need to disable BT from the module those are the pins to tape.

The intel 3160 with Bluetooth accomplishes the best possible combination of dual channel and Bluetooth into a single 1×1 chip. It is designed for slim and light laptops and notebooks. For that reason the 1×1 form factor is also greatest limitation.

Allowing for up to 433mbit maximum. For example, look at the 2×2 Intel 7260, the larger size allows up to 866mbit throughput. If you are looking to upgrade your budget laptop to be able to support 5ghz collections and take advantage of dual band connectivity, then the 3160 is definitely your best bet!.

Purchased this to fix the wireless on my laptop which did not come preinstalled with bluetooth and a refurbished IBM Thinkpad X310E. Was a 5 minute upgrade that was simple to implement and gave life to a laptop that had recently been upgraded to Win10, and worth the investment.

REVISED – Please note that although I originally installed this in a working X310E, I ran into an issue when attempting to complete a full shut down and reboot of the computer where the BIOS would not allow startup because it was not approved as compliant with the laptop.

The problem is specific to the IBM BIOS and I could not resolve the issue to get past it, so unfortunately this is not compatible. The card works perfect in another laptop and also in my Foxconn nettop workstation.

This is basically a build your own Wi-Fi Card. Antennae and PCI-e adapter are supplied, no screws supplied though which was a bit of a bummer since i’d lost the ones from my laptop. Fair warning, I already knew this but just putting it out there for those who may not: you do need your own mini PCI-e Wi-Fi adapter which is NOT supplied, so whether you purchase one for about $50 or pull one out of an old laptop is up to you, so beware that what is shown in the picture is all you get.

I personally pulled one out of an old laptop and it worked just fine. Reception and speed. On just two of the three supplied antennae, this feels just like it did in my old laptop – 4 out of 5 bars of reception through about 4 walls and a maybe 25 metre distance between the desktop and the router itself.

Great reception with no latency. The speed felt just as it would had I used it in the laptop, but now it’s in my desktop! I don’t think I could have been any more satisfied had I used all 3 antennae.

Build structure is great, but the antennae are VERY fiddly to get in. You sort of have to twist and turn in order to actually get it into the slot. The plugs are also very fiddly but once on they stay on as long as you’re careful.

Verdict: The product is a great DIY Wi-Fi card and works exactly as intended, with no discernable difference between laptop usage and between desktop usage. I gave this only 4 stars due to the lack of screws and how annoying it was to get the antennae into their slots, but that’s simply being nit-picky.

As long as you have the screws on-hand or know where to get them, and are patient, this product is a great alternative to a desktop Wi-Fi card, and saving you about $80 if you have a dead laptop whose Wi-Fi card is intact.

I would give it a 9/10 if I could but I can’t, so yeah, it’s really a 9/10.

I just bought one of these to adapt a mini pci-e wifi to my full size PC build. As soon as I started it up, it burnt out and I was lucky it didn’t damage my motherboard. Turns out the mounting plate on the back touches the bare tracks on the PCB and shorted everything out.

After further investigation it was also noted that the voltage regulator on this adapter is the wrong one. (3. 3V instead of 1. 5V). The seller also did not help in any way, the replies seem to be automated.

If you have no other choice but to use this, first of all replace the voltage regulator. (An AMS1117 1. 8V will do the job) then remove the mounting plate and put 2 layers of Kapton tape on the PCB where the mounting plate touches.

Then reinstall the mounting plate and make sure everything on the circuit makes sense before installing in your PC.

I bought this for my first desktop build. It it easy to set up and install. The build quality is great! I like the fact that it comes with screws to fit two different size laptop network cards. This product works like it should.

The quality of the wifi signal will greatly depend on two things, 1. ) the signal of your wifi router. I mean what the maximum download and upload speeds it supports and what is the maximum range of the wifi router.

2. ) the network card you get. I got an intel 4965agn wireless card, which supports 802. 11a, g, n. Which gives it a maximum theoretical download speed of 300 Mb/s. with long range as well. I hope you find this helpful.

I wasn’t really expecting this router to be working so great. I was stuck with a modem/router combo from AT&T which only offer single band with very limited functions. Our kids were using and abusing the internet connection and I found this router to be the solution to all problems.

Installation couldn’t be more simple, plug it in, connect it to your modem (cable included) and set up some basic things such as passwords. You’re done. But the best part comes in the form of the companion app which is free to download to your phone.

You can set rules such as schedules for the WIFI to be on or off in order to make sure that your kids only have access when you want them to. You can also set the speed limits to certain devices such as streaming devices.

You can blacklist devices in order to block internet access completely (our kids have never cleaned their rooms so fast, just to get internet back). There are many more options and it’s laid out very well.

If you’re a parent, this thing is a must. Another nice surprise is the WIFI signal strength. It’s amazing. I was able to unplug the repeater we were using to expand the network across the house. I really recommend this router.

Pros: Very good for making desktoo pc wireless, it will reach your moderm from a far distance, all my problem was solved after installing this adaptor. Very happy with it. Cons: Could have 5ghz supported only supports 2.

4ghz.

easy to install with the app. seems to be well made. powers steaming services two rooms away with not having to buffer occasionally.