How To Upgrade Your PCs To Wifi 6

Let’s see how to introduce support for the new wifi six standard in your client devices, notebook, or desktop PCs. Notebooks equipped with a wifi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) card are still expensive and uncommon. While the wifi Alliance has not officially approved the final specifications, major wireless router manufacturers have already begun shipping the first devices with wifi six support.

And it’s a giant leap forward because wifi 6 is not a simple update of previous standards but a new technology that improves data transfer performance, reduces congestion situations and reduces battery consumption by client devices . In the article wifi 6, what’s new in the next generation, we have detailed the main innovations that wifi six heralds.

Wifi 6 routers employ several technologies designed to increase overall performance by offering higher throughput speeds – close to 10Gbps, at least in theory, compared to the maximum rates of around 3Gbps achievable on paper with the 802.11ac wifi standard .

As mentioned, wifi 6 uses OFDMA ( Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access ) modulations, allowing up to 30 clients to share the same channel simultaneously, thus improving efficiency and increasing overall capacity, and reducing latency. For example, one person in your home is streaming content, and another is checking social media on a mobile device. In that case, OFDMA allows the router to assign channels to each device based on actual needs.

Wifi 6 also uses the new Target Wake Time (TWT) mechanism, allowing devices to determine when to wake up the wireless link to send and receive data. Instead of having the wifi connection always in place, it will be possible for clients to enable it when necessary to significantly extend the battery life of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as smart home or intelligent office devices powered by battery such as security cameras and video door phones.

The new standard also leverages previously unused radio frequencies to deliver even better 2.4GHz performance and uses even more aggressive bandwidth management algorithms to provide enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) options. Wifi 6 also offers eight MU-MIMO uplink and downlink streams so that data can be transmitted simultaneously rather than sequentially, allowing bandwidth to be shared more evenly between compatible clients (for comparison, wifi 5, aka 802.11ac uses four MU-MIMO streams).

Wifi 6 Update On Notebook And Desktop Systems

Take your time embracing wifi 6. Still, if you have already purchased a router or access point that supports the new technology or are planning to buy it in the short term to take advantage of the new standard, you will need compatible clients.

It is out of the question to buy new compatible devices just to be able to exchange data via wifi six within your LAN. Instead, consider upgrading to wifi six as regards the WLAN cards contained in the various PCs.

Wifi 6 cards for setting up the latest generation and future-proof wifi network are already available on the market. If your notebooks were already equipped with a wifi card in M.2 2230 format (dimensions 22 x 30 millimeters, hence the numerical acronym) connected to the motherboard instead of soldered, you could quickly (and inexpensively) upgrade to wifi 6.

The use of the PCIe interface represents the best situation (on the other hand, the integrated Intel CNVi connectivity module connected directly to the processor creates problems), even if it should be borne in mind that the replacement of the wifi card initially installed by the notebook manufacturer must be allowed at the BIOS level.

HP and Lenovo, for example, block the use of third-party wifi cards while we have yet to find any problems on ASUS systems. One of the best products to upgrade is the Killer wifi 6 AX1650 card available on Amazon Italy: this module, based on the Intel AX200 chip, is compatible with all M.2 2230 slots and can be used not only with laptops but also on desktops PCs using, where necessary, a special adapter (such as the one that can be purchased from this page ) which accepts the insertion of the Killer wifi 6 AX1650 M.2 card

As mentioned, the Killer wifi 6 AX1650 module and, presumably, all future cards based on the Intel AX200 chip use the NGFF format ( next generation form factor: specifically, these are M.2 2230 cards that use the A notch or E for inserting into the slot ( A-key or E-key ): see the image above. The host system must therefore be able to accept this type of M.2 card.

The good news is that most notebooks released in the last five years use an NGFF wifi card, so they have an M.2 2230 slot and are ready to upgrade. If your laptop currently uses an Intel wifi five adapter model AC-7260, AC-8260, AC-3160, AC-3160, or AC-9260, it will support the new AX200-based module. Additionally, the Killer wifi 6 module fits laptops using a Rivet Networks wifi 5 card: Killer 1435, Killer 1535, and Killer 1550.

To identify the wifi card in use on your notebooks, we suggest pressing the Windows+R key combination in Windows and then typing devmgmt. MSC. With a double click on the Network cards item, you will have to identify the wireless card (i.e., ” wireless-AC ” or similar). If the model name falls among those mentioned above, you can replace it with the wifi 6 Killer card.

In Any Case, It Is Essential To Make Sure It Is An M.2 2230 Model

During replacement on laptop PCs, it is essential to ensure that the antenna cables are correctly reconnected to the connectors on the new card. The upgrade possibilities of desktop PCs are even broader: some systems have a built-in M.2 2230 slot, and more importantly, all standard desktops released in the last decade have PCIe slots.

With an NGFF to PCIe adapter, you can upgrade your machine to wifi 6. PCIe slots come in different variations: the longer the place, the faster the additional device can fit. In our case, you will only need one PCIe x1 slot (the shortest one), but any other PCIe slot will do just fine.

In the example, a “particular” motherboard like the MSI B360-F PRO for mining in which you can still see the many PCIe x1 connectors. After installing the wifi 6 Killer card presented above, Windows Update should recognize it and install the corresponding drivers when the system boots. If this does not happen, you can download the drivers from the manufacturer’s website using another PC and proceed with their installation.

As a final observation, all Intel AX200 chip-based wifi six modules use the mid-range 2×2 specification, meaning they can offer a maximum speed of 2.4Gbps with possibly lower “real-world” performance. As seen at the beginning, these performances are far removed from those that the wifi six standard can offer, at least in theory.

To try and get even faster data transfer speeds with wifi 6, we will have to wait for the release of higher-tier cards. However, the procedure to follow for the update remains the same, as illustrated in this article. Finally, switching to wifi 6 offers significant benefits during heavy and simultaneous data transfers within your LAN network. Still, it is also beneficial for those who use Gigabit data connections, such as FTTH fiber ultra-broadband connections.

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