Question m.2 WiFi card for mini-PC

[CrisR82]

Since I already screwed up once, might as well actually ask before doing so again - I recently got one of those HP EliteDesk 705 G4 mini PCs, however it came without a WiFi card installed, so I decided to grab one.
Checked the manual, it listed Intel 3168, 7265, 8265 and 9560 as compatible, but at the time I didn't notice it has specifically listed next to them "non-vPro", which apparently is a huge deal for me because my model is using a Ryzen 5 Pro 2400GE CPU, so the Intel 9560 card I got doesn't work at all.

Looking up online, at least for my region, it seems to be impossible to find the non-vPro model of this same card (at least at anything resembling a reasonable price, so I started searching for non-vPro cards in general.

What I found are 2 cards - Intel 9260 and AX200, both specifically labeled non-vPro at a local store and at a reasonable price, however looking at the pictures, the connector seems to be different - the one I have right now is an "E", while the two I found both seem to be "AE" m.2 type (are those the terms for the connectors?).

So my question here is - would any of those work? I kind'a have no idea now m.2 slot compatibility works and the service manual from HP basically says nothing on what that slot supports.
Been banging my head with this all night last night, any help or info on the topic would be greatly appreciated!

 

[bill001g]

Are you sure you mean vPro and not CNVIO. Vpro is something you find on business laptop that companies use for remote management.

CNVIO is a feature that move part of the wifi function off the adapter into the chipset.

The manual is likely wrong if it lists 9560 since that requires a CNVIO interface and others are the more standard PCIE. I strongly suspect your pc uses the more standard PCIE based wifi cards.

So unless this is really some kind of pc sold to enterprise class company I don't think there is a restriction on which wifi cards will work. HP used to be a huge pain about locking machines into only using HP official parts in the bios. This is extremely uncommon nowdays but it still does exist on very special lines of pc where a company does not want employees changing parts.

In general you can put a a/e card into a e slot.

If you want a intel card I would look at ones that say ax210. This is wifi6e. You could also look at wifi7 cards I think it is be200 but likely non intel cards will also work.

Although you might not be able to use wifi6e or wifi7 today it seems there is almost no difference in the price. Wifi7 cards only lately have dropped a lot in price.

The only concern on wifi7 is you must have windows 11 for official driver support.

 

[CrisR82]

Are you sure you mean vPro and not CNVIO. Vpro is something you find on business laptop that companies use for remote management.

CNVIO is a feature that move part of the wifi function off the adapter into the chipset.

The manual is likely wrong if it lists 9560 since that requires a CNVIO interface and others are the more standard PCIE. I strongly suspect your pc uses the more standard PCIE based wifi cards.

So unless this is really some kind of pc sold to enterprise class company I don't think there is a restriction on which wifi cards will work. HP used to be a huge pain about locking machines into only using HP official parts in the bios. This is extremely uncommon nowdays but it still does exist on very special lines of pc where a company does not want employees changing parts.

In general you can put a a/e card into a e slot.

If you want a intel card I would look at ones that say ax210. This is wifi6e. You could also look at wifi7 cards I think it is be200 but likely non intel cards will also work.

Although you might not be able to use wifi6e or wifi7 today it seems there is almost no difference in the price. Wifi7 cards only lately have dropped a lot in price.

The only concern on wifi7 is you must have windows 11 for official driver support.

Well, this IS intended to be a business/enterprise mini PC as far as I know.
The listing in the service manual is as follows (copy-pasted):
"WLAN modules
Intel 8265 802.11AC 2x2 Wi-Fi +Bluetooth M.2 Combo Card non-VPro
Intel 7265 802.11AC 2x2 with Bluetooth M.2 Combo Card (non-vPro)
Intel 3168 802.11AC 2x2 Wi-Fi +Bluetooth M.2 Combo Card non-vPro
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 9560 802.11 AC 2x2 WiFi + Bluetooth 5.0 Combo Adapter (non-vPro)"
(the actual manual: https://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06112892.pdf#page=13&zoom=100,0,230 WiFi module info is on the bottom of page 13 and start of page 14)

Asking specifically about the AX200 since the one I found locally is pretty cheap (I don't need speed all that much and my router is WiFi6 only anyway) and specifically labeled as non-vPro in the listing. Apparently going for the Ryzen model for the better iGPU really complicated the connectivity situation for myself on this one. >_<

 

[bill001g]

That has to be wrong since 9560 and 3168 need different chipset support.

It is strange that they talk about "non-vpro". VPRO is a feature that is not used on consumer equipment. Most equipment does not have that support.

You would think if it was a machine that needed the VPRO feature they would list cards that supported it. It is a very small number of cards. Listing it in the reverse is kind strange since most cards are non-vpro even if they don't say it.

AX200 cards are fine my comment mostly was the pricing is very strange when you can get more advanced cards for less money. It seems they have greatly reduced the number of ax200 chips they make so they now can cost more than the newer ax210.