I swapped out my laptop's Wi-Fi 6E card for Wi-Fi 7 in minutes and gained 50% more performance for just $54 — here's how you can, too

[Admin]

I saw up to a 50 percent performance uplift going from the default Wi-Fi 6E card to a Wi-Fi 7 transplant.

I swapped out my laptop's Wi-Fi 6E card for Wi-Fi 7 in minutes and gained 50% more performance for just $54 — here's how you can, too : Read more

 

[Jame5]

Sadly I have learned first hand why you went with a Qualcomm wifi7 solution vs. Intel. Intel's currently available wifi7 solutions (BE series) have some proprietary thing going on where they will not function on AMD systems. Despite not being the CNVio solutions.

It now doesn't matter which option you choose:

• BE200 - Standard wifi7 M.2 solution
• BE201 - CNVio wifi7 M.2 solution

They are both only functional on Intel at this point in time.

Which is a major bummer, I have swapped every Killer/Realtek/Mediatek/whatever wifi M.2. solution on any motherboard or laptop with an Intel solution up until now. Now I can either stay with Wifi 6E or earlier Intel solutions, or I have to pivot to something like Qualcomm.

 

[JeffreyP55]

Gamers want WiFi7, Joe Sixpack like me (I don't drink) don't need 7. WiFi6 holds its own. I do not intend to upgrade my
G34 SURFboard DOCSIS 3.1 Modem/Wi-Fi 6 Router until Cox forces me to upgrade or lose some Docsis 3.1 functionality to Docsis 4.0.

 

[NorthboundOcclusive]

this also only works if you laptop doesnt have a device whitelist in the bios (looking at you lenovo) that prohibits device upgrades other than a very limited set

 

[Notton]

I too tried an Intel BE200 on an AMD Ryzen 4500U Dell laptop, and it resulted in a non-boot until I unplugged the wifi card.
I even disabled secure-boot, the thing that disables parts until you enter the BIOS password, and still a no-go.
I can live with the realtek wifi-5 card, but it's very annoying to know the laptop has slots for SSD, RAM, and Wifi, except the Wifi only works with certain cards, despite being pin-compatible.

 

[logainofhades]

I too tried an Intel BE200 on an AMD Ryzen 4500U Dell laptop, and it resulted in a non-boot until I unplugged the wifi card.
I even disabled secure-boot, the thing that disables parts until you enter the BIOS password, and still a no-go.
I can live with the realtek wifi-5 card, but it's very annoying to know the laptop has slots for SSD, RAM, and Wifi, except the Wifi only works with certain cards, despite being pin-compatible.

OEM's tend to limit what you can upgrade. Dell and HP in particular are bad about it.

 

[magbarn]

OEM's tend to limit what you can upgrade. Dell and HP in particular are bad about it.

Yup, along with that they tend to use the worst screens, one of the reasons I avoid their laptops.

I too tried an Intel BE200 on an AMD Ryzen 4500U Dell laptop, and it resulted in a non-boot until I unplugged the wifi card.
I even disabled secure-boot, the thing that disables parts until you enter the BIOS password, and still a no-go.
I can live with the realtek wifi-5 card, but it's very annoying to know the laptop has slots for SSD, RAM, and Wifi, except the Wifi only works with certain cards, despite being pin-compatible.

No one has figured out how to get any Intel Wifi7 cards to work on any non-Intel system, laptop or desktop motherboard.

 

[logainofhades]

I am fine with Wifi 6, even gaming.

 

[ezst036]

It is really terrible customer service to explicitly go out of the way to make sure your product offering is incompatible.

 

[phxrider]

I did this on my G513 and there wasn't much, if any performance uplift going from a MT7922 to a MT7925 using a TP-Link BE800 router on gigabit Internet. I didn't test with on-prem transfers because I don't care about those at home. The 7922 was already stellar performing though, I just do this for fun and to satisfy curiosity.

You can buy all of these all day long on eBay, last time I checked a while ago MT7927s were hard to find, but the MT7925s, and Qualcomms and Intels are all over the place. Also, I believe the MSI Herald Wi-Fi 7 PCI adapter uses the Qualcomm, and the TP-Link one uses the MT7927. You can buy those on amazon. The 160Mhz MT7925s are about half the price of the 320MHz cards and should still be good for a few gigabits in theory.

 

[bill001g]

Other than a better speedtest number what did spending $54 buy you.

The only thing it helps is large file downloads and it depends on how many hours per month you actually do that. Almost every other app does not even need 100mbps connection. Netflix uses only 30mbps. It is a rather rare use case. Even someone who plays game the amount of time you spend download games is a tiny fraction of the time spent on a game.

It also does not go any faster unless you also already own a wifi7 router and many of those are still pricey but coming down.

It also may or may not be any faster. First you must be able to get 320mhz radio block. This is the key thing that makes wifi7 faster than wifi6 and 160mhz radio blocks. This also means you must be running on 6ghz which is more easily blocked by walls. The large radio block you attempt to use the more interference from neighbors you are going to get. The other thing that can in theory make wifi7 faster is using QAM4096. This is almost a joke you have to almost have the machine on the same table as the router. QAM1024 wifi6e uses barely works in the same room.

Now if you are going to buy a new wifi card because the other one is defective or this is a new build there really is little reason not to buy wiifi7 because of little price difference but I would not expect it to actually perform better.

 

[Pemalite]

Wouldn't waste my time or money.

The main bottleneck for Wifi speeds tends to be internet... This upgrade is really only relevant if you are doing lots of large file transfers across a network which can saturate the Wifi link.

 

[watzupken]

I think one needs to consider if you are already using a Wifi7 router and network service. It’s pointless to upgrade the wifi card in the device without these since there will be barely any improvement.

 

[Dr3ams]

My wife has a HP 17-ca1010ng laptop. After reading this article I was curious if her wifi could be upgraded. Reading the maintenance and service guide, I discovered it can. The laptop has a Realtek RTL8723DE wifi card which has 2.4 GHz. It can only be upgraded to a Realtek RTL8821CE with 5 GHz.

She doesn't need the upgrade, but it's nice to know that it could be done. I bought this laptop 5 years ago when it was on sale for 500 Euros. It didn't come with an OS, but at the time I had an extra license for Windows 10.

Laptop specs:
- AMD Ryzen 5 3500U
- DDR4-2400 32 GB (2x 16 GB) I upgraded it from 16 GB...just because RAM is so cheap at the moment.
- 512 GB M.2 SSD
- AMD Radeon Vega 8
- Display 17" 1920x1080 IPS matt
- DVD reader/writer

 

[bill001g]

My wife has a HP 17-ca1010ng laptop. After reading this article I was curious if her wifi could be upgraded. Reading the maintenance and service guide, I discovered it can. The laptop has a Realtek RTL8723DE wifi card which has 2.4 GHz. It can only be upgraded to a Realtek RTL8821CE with 5 GHz.

She doesn't need the upgrade, but it's nice to know that it could be done. I bought this laptop 5 years ago when it was on sale for 500 Euros. It didn't come with an OS, but at the time I had an extra license for Windows 10.

Laptop specs:
- AMD Ryzen 5 3500U
- DDR4-2400 32 GB (2x 16 GB) I upgraded it from 16 GB...just because RAM is so cheap at the moment.
- 512 GB M.2 SSD
- AMD Radeon Vega 8
- Display 17" 1920x1080 IPS matt
- DVD reader/writer

Be very careful upgrading to really new technology. There are other wifi 6e devices that refuse to install the drivers on windows 10. There have been reddit post about how to trick it into installing. It seem it is not so much a technical limit but a microsoft thing related to which drivers they have authorized...under the scam of it being a security thing.

Maybe learn to love linux instead on these older machines.

 

[rj3005]

There must have been terrible wrong with your 6e setup.
I get very near your WiFi 7 results with 6e

 

[rj3005]

Wouldn't waste my time or money.

The main bottleneck for Wifi speeds tends to be internet... This upgrade is really only relevant if you are doing lots of large file transfers across a network which can saturate the Wifi link.

That largely depends on your internet connection, my cheap (€25/month) 10Gb fibre can easily provide more speed than wifi7 use; I regularly reach over 6.5Gb/s using ethernet cable and not reaching even half that over wifi

 

[Pemalite]

That largely depends on your internet connection, my cheap (€25/month) 10Gb fibre can easily provide more speed than wifi7 use; I regularly reach over 6.5Gb/s using ethernet cable and not reaching even half that over wifi

Wifi 6e can do 9.6Gb... Provided you are using 6 GHz band in addition to the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.

Interference tends to be the biggest smasher for Wifi speeds.

I know my Wifi 6 isn't even blinking an eye and that is with 1Gb Fibre.

But even if you are only getting 3Gb wifi speeds, you are likely bottleneck by your individual connection to a site/service anyway, it's only when doing multiple transfers to different servers that you will notice stuff coming up short... So again, it's the internet that is the likely bottleneck.

 

[logainofhades]

I had Frontier 1gb fiber installed Friday. They gave me an Eero Pro7 for router. Long story short, I went back to my TP-Link AX6000.

 

[bill001g]

I had Frontier 1gb fiber installed Friday. They gave me an Eero Pro7 for router. Long story short, I went back to my TP-Link AX6000.

Although I am not fan of eero equipment you likely should keep it around, unless the ISP charges you a extra fee.

You may not need it today but your tplink does not run on the 6ghz band. The key reason wifi6e and wifi7 are faster is the 6ghz radio band. Partially it is because you can easily use 160mzh and 320mhz radio channels but I suspect a larger reason it runs faster is there is less competition from neighbors. On 5ghz every router is overlapping the same radio channels. 6ghz will likely become the same but for now you get less interference.

In general I really wish router makers would make very simple router. Routers are loaded with bloatware like AI and other scary features like auto firmware updates. All I want my router to do is run the NAT function and share my public IP with my internal devices. You have to spend so much time going though and disabling stuff and can not be 100% sure it is all turned off. If the features do not exist they can't be hacked is my theory.

 

[logainofhades]

I have nothing that runs on 7, and by the time I do, the next gen of Wifi will be available. The router is still sitting behind the TV, where the tech left it, near my TP-Link AX6000. The range sucks on the Eero. I can still get a signal from my TP-Link from a block away. The Eero struggled to make it to the other end of my house. I live in a small rural town of less than 1K people, so not a lot of competition either.