Upgrading WiFi Card to 802.11ax, do antennas need upgrading?

[Sandy]

Hi Neowinians

 

I am upgrading my WiFi card on my Laptop, currently it is a Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 Plus Bluetooth 4.0, 1x1, M.2 2230 format, which is giving me signal problems as it cuts out in the furthest room in my house from the router which happens to be the office. I have opened my laptop to look and currently the card has a black and white cable attached to it, which I've googled to understand are a main cable and an auxilary cable. I have also found a manual for my laptop which shows the antenna's in diagrams.

My new one I am looking to upgrade to is Intel Dual Band WiFi 6 AX200 802.11ax, 2x2, M.2 2230 which I've researched and think would work fine with my laptop.

 

The only thing I don't understand is whether the antenna's in your laptop need to be upgraded as well or not as my old card was 1x1 and new one is 2x2 and supports technologies such as MIMO. I think taking the whole laptop apart will be too much for me to do to replace the antennas if that's what I need to do. However I've also read on google as there are two cables, it should work fine as 2x2. Can someone offer some insight into this for me please and whether antennas will need upgrading so I know if there is any point in buying the 802.11ax card?

 

Thank you in advance, much appreciated, been away from the Neowin community for some time

[Seketh]

The antennas should work just fine. I recently did the same in a laptop with a 1x1 realtek card and can get 1.7GB 2x2 from 160Mhz AC with the AX200. 

 

A mistake I actually did a while back was trying to upgrade a Half Mini PCIe (HMC) to an M.2 AX200 (using an adapter). I didn't realize that the connectors are different, they are 0.5mm bigger in Half Mini PCIe cards. However, since you already have an M.2, you're all set according to the following webpage: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000027956/network-and-i-o/wireless-networking.html

Edited May 23, 2020 by Seketh

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

AFAIK, it is the chip that gets you the ax wireless, not the anttennas.

[d5aqoëp]

No need to upgrade antennas. I have AX200 card installed on my desktop MSI X299 Tomahawk AC motherboard and it works flawless and out of the box since 2004 19041 May build. But download the latest wireless Intel driver from station-drivers.com for best stability as earlier drivers had few bugs.

[jshvsev]

Sorry for necroposting, but if wifi 7 cards are available, is it necessary to replace the antennas to support the 6ghz band?