So I have a build with an ASRock B550M-ITX/ac. It's been my main PC for about 2 years now it's a great board, especially considering the price I paid for it. I didn't really need more features than what this board had, except that the default wifi card was pretty bad. I've been living with it for a while, but because a deal for the venerable AX210 recently came up for only $15 I decided to buy one for my PC. It just arrived today and I just installed it for a pretty impressive jump in networking performance, especially since I primarily use Wi-Fi for my PC.
The ASRock board comes with the Intel 3168NGW by default. It's not a terrible card for Wi-Fi 5, but it is quite a bit slow all things considered.
With this card, this is my speed test result:
This is the new card I just got in the mail.
Begin by gaining access to the motherboard's rear. There are two screws that keep the Wi-Fi card in place:
Remove them, and the Wi-Fi card can be removed like a regular PCIe device.
The Wi-Fi card lives inside what is basically a small Faraday cage.
There's a small screw on the side you need to remove to gain access to the internals.
Remove the rubber tab the keeps the antenna connectors in place, detach the antenna connectors, then remove the screw that holds the card in place.
This is the card that originally came with the board.
Here's our Wi-Fi card upgrade:.
Replace it into the metal casing, in the reverse of how we removed the card. Install the card back into the motherboard and reassemble your PC.
That's all you need to do. Pretty painless process, I imagine I'd've been done in like 20 minutes if I wasn't trying to document everything (or torque every fastener...)
The results speak for themselves:
Very happy with this upgrade.
The ASRock board comes with the Intel 3168NGW by default. It's not a terrible card for Wi-Fi 5, but it is quite a bit slow all things considered.
With this card, this is my speed test result:
This is the new card I just got in the mail.
Begin by gaining access to the motherboard's rear. There are two screws that keep the Wi-Fi card in place:
Remove them, and the Wi-Fi card can be removed like a regular PCIe device.
The Wi-Fi card lives inside what is basically a small Faraday cage.
There's a small screw on the side you need to remove to gain access to the internals.
Remove the rubber tab the keeps the antenna connectors in place, detach the antenna connectors, then remove the screw that holds the card in place.
This is the card that originally came with the board.
Here's our Wi-Fi card upgrade:.
Replace it into the metal casing, in the reverse of how we removed the card. Install the card back into the motherboard and reassemble your PC.
That's all you need to do. Pretty painless process, I imagine I'd've been done in like 20 minutes if I wasn't trying to document everything (or torque every fastener...)
The results speak for themselves:
Very happy with this upgrade.
