Question AX3000 adapter issues: bluetooth working yet card isn't detected in BIOS

[riflesniper]

i have a full list of my hardware on pcpartpicker here. the problem card is a fenvi ax210 PCIe wifi 6e network adapter, which houses an AX3000 chipset with bluetooth 5.3

CPU: r5 5600g
GPU: RTX 2060
mobo: MSI MAG b550 tomahawk
PSU: corsair CX550M 550 watt
RAM x4 8gb corsair vengeance RGB 3200 mHz
storage: 1tb teamgroup MP44L M.2 (OS drive) + 512gb samsung 960 pro M.2 (general storage)
OS: windows 11 home

recently i decided that i should probably get a wireless adapter in the case that i'm ever in a situation that leaves me without ethernet, since my motherboard is ethernet only-- and why not? ethernet-only boards are cheaper, and i can just take the adapter with me between builds if needed, 6e is still pretty fresh out of the gate after all.

it gets here, i slot it in to the secondary x16 spot (first x1 slot is covered by the gpu and the second one is already home to a USB hub to alleviate my ever-eternal shortage of ports), plug it into the internal usb 2.0 header, power it on... the light is working! hokayyy, let's install the New drivers and check the device manager, surely it's--

oh. uh oh.

ok, bluetooth's working fine, we don't need to worry about that. where's the damn wifi, then???

long story short, i do everything i can think of and find; repairing the network drivers (as you can see above), resetting the adapter settings, running winsock reset, enabling WWAN and WLAN autoconfig in services, i even tried to run netcfg -d but it just spat this error out at me...

alright, to hell with this crap, let's look at what the BIOS has to say!!

i do a reboot, mash the delete key until it takes me to BIOS, look at the board explorer, and. HUH?

the damn thing doesn't even show up in the PCIE slot!! i didn't think to grab another picture of it, but iirc the USB2 header showed up as being plugged in, but still displayed the empty slot text for whatever reason.

i looked up solutions online, worried that it was because i got a cheaper card off aliexpress instead of something from, say, ASUS or TPlink, but it seems like people have a lot of trouble getting AX3000 cards in general to cooperate with their systems. is there anything i'm missing that might make this sucker work, or should i send this back overseas and shell out for a card from a mainstream brand?

 

[bill001g]

I would first pull the USB card and see if the wifi card works in that slot. Mostly this is to eliminate some strange restriction on the motherboard that makes the slot appears not in use.

Most times I would recommend a linux boot test image but when the device does not appear at all especially in the bios it is not going to be a simple driver issue.

There are lots of these type cards sold on amazon. If they were video cards you would call them so called reference cards. They almost all follow a design intel put out when this chipset launched. In general they are all the same and work pretty well. You would want to load ax210 drivers directly from intel rather than use the ones from the vendor.

I am going to suspect you got unlucky and got bad hardware. The only real issue with these brands of cards is when you get a failure. A mainstream brand partially costs more because they have better warranty services you still get failed cards out the box even from them.

 

[riflesniper]

I would first pull the USB card and see if the wifi card works in that slot. Mostly this is to eliminate some strange restriction on the motherboard that makes the slot appears not in use.

Most times I would recommend a linux boot test image but when the device does not appear at all especially in the bios it is not going to be a simple driver issue.

There are lots of these type cards sold on amazon. If they were video cards you would call them so called reference cards. They almost all follow a design intel put out when this chipset launched. In general they are all the same and work pretty well. You would want to load ax210 drivers directly from intel rather than use the ones from the vendor.

I am going to suspect you got unlucky and got bad hardware. The only real issue with these brands of cards is when you get a failure. A mainstream brand partially costs more because they have better warranty services you still get failed cards out the box even from them.

thanks for the tips :] i'm busy right now but i'll give it the ol switcheroo when i have the chance. i did get the drivers directly from intel's website so its defs not a problem of the drivers that were given from the vendor.

if the USB card works in the x4 slot and the adapter keeps on being broken, i'm gonna box it up and send it back. if its the slot itself, i should be able to take the mobo back to memory express for a replacement since it's still within the protection period

 

[bill001g]

I wasn't so much thinking the motherboard is broken. I did not look this up until now but I suspected there was something like this, most motherboard have similar disclaimers.

When installing devices in M.2_2, PCI_E2 & PCI_E3 slots at the same time, PCI_E3 slot will be unavailable, and M2_2 slot only supports PCIe x2.

What I have not done is read the manual to know which exact slot is "e3". There seems to be restrictions on using them all.

 

[lantis3]

P.16 PCIE slots restriction
https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/MAGB550TOMAHAWK.pdf

Plug the card into PCIE_E4 slot and see.

 

[riflesniper]

just took out the secondary m.2 drive and VOILA, it immediately started working!! sometimes its the simple things that fly over your head... in any case, if i'm ever in a situation where im ethernetless, i'll be prepared