Optimus VII update wifi card

H

hesuruio

Member
Recently my Optimus VII (Clevo N150 chassis I believe) laptop has been only used as a game streaming platform (XCloud, GeForce Now, PsNow).

I was wondering if anyone has attempted upgrading the wifi card from the default N7265 to a more modern Intel 9260 (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/99445/intel-wireless-ac-9260.html)

At first glance they look like they are compatible but I am worried about the details (drivers and other similar things).

I have the 9260 on my work machine and it can reach speeds of up to 130mbps whereas the 7265 rarely goes above 50mbps.

Any advice would be most welcomed.

Thanks!
 
Bhuna50

Bhuna50

Author Level
Can you post your full specs from the order page please, someone might be able to tell then from that if the current Wifi card is built into the motherboard or if there is room for one (such as a WLAN M2 interface card - eg. AX200).

You could always look at your Upgrade options on your account page as this will list what is possible to upgrade in your laptop and provide you with a price of the component if available - you then get to choose to install yourself or send machine in for them to install (charged for of course).
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
The N7265 is an 802.11b/g/n card so should be well capable of more than 50Mbps. Are you sure it's not set to use only 802.11g? That has a maximum speed of only 54Mbps.
 
H

hesuruio

Member
Hi everyone and thanks for the replies.

The current specs are:

Chassis & Display Optimus VII Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor 6300HQ (2.3GHz, 3.2GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 16GB HyperX IMPACT 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
Drive 1 - Samsung 500GB 970 EVO PLUS NVME
Drive 2 - Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5 inch SATA Solid State Drive
Drive 3 - Hard Disk 750GB WD BLACK 2.5" WD7500BPKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
Sound Card Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema 2
Wireless/Wired Networking GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N-7265 M.2 (300Mbps, 802.11BGN) +
BLUETOOTH

As it turns out I think the problem is I have the single band version of the N-7265 card so it only connects using 2.4 Ghz.

Probably any card which could connect via 5Ghz would fare better.

Does anyone have experience with upgrading these laptops to AX200?
 
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H

hesuruio

Member
Just to come back here with some info. I have upgraded to an AX200NGW. Performance is incredible compared to the old N7265 which didn't even support 5Ghz. I consistently get 130mb now. Stability seems fine and bluetooth is also working great. My WiFi router is a BT HomeHub 4.
 
H

hesuruio

Member
Hello,

Since this model laptop is quite long in the tooth now, and Microsoft have artificially pulled official support for Windows 11 for its CPU generation, I decided to give Linux a go.

I've been incredibly pleased with Pop! OS 22.04. Everything ran out of the box including WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth and NVME drive.
It also has some really good dual graphics support and the developers build their own NVidia drivers since the parent company also sells Linux laptops and desktops.

I just wanted to follow up on this thread to prompt other people who may have laptops of a same generation and aren't really sure about which direction to go into to get OS support in the future.
 
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