Wireless adapter upgrade

[bravobrown]

Hello HP community! 

I recently was given an HP Pavilion Slimline 400-314 to work remotely (was bought to use as a server at work but never used). I have gigabit internet service at home, but this PC only has the single band 2.4ghz Qualcomm Atheros AR9495 802.11b/g/n wifi adapter, and can't take advantage of my super fast wifi network.  The Slimline is nice for its small footprint on my desk, but seems to be limited by the motherboard with everything built in. 

I would very much like to upgrade to something like the Asus PCE-AC88 wireless PCI-E dual band AC3100 adapter that would match my router's capabilities, but even though it would fit an expansion slot, it doesn't appear there is internal support. Is that something that can be added, or am I stuck with the PCI express half-length mini card slot and single internal antenna? I absolutely want the fastest possible internal wifi adapter this PC will accomodate, preferably with external antennas, both 2.4 and 5ghz bands and bluetooth capability. 

Please advise. Thanks very much! 

Mark

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, Mark:

You're right.

Looking at the picture of the motherboard, there are no expansion slots.

Unfortunately, if there is only one antenna cable going to the internal Atheros wifi card in there now (the card was designed to work best with two antennas, however), you would not be able to do a direct swap of the Atheros card with a different dual band model that would fit in the mini-PCI express slot.

So, your only option would be to use an external dual band USB AC wifi adapter.

[bravobrown]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the quick response!  That's what I was afraid of. Free computer, but no joy for updating to 4 years newer tech.  At least I can max out the RAM. 

Is it a possiblity to add another internal antenna, or even add an expansion board?  In the past, I've upgraded all sorts of things, but I've never dealt with one that was so limited.  I believe the USB ports are all v2.0, so that would also limit the speed of an external wifi adapter. Then again, if I could get anywhere near the max through-put of USB 2.0, it would still be a major step up. 

Thanks for your insight! 

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

You're very welcome, Mark.

If you can figure out where to mount the other end of the antenna, you can upgrade to this internal card...

Broadcom BCM4352 802.11ac 2x2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0 combo      HP Part # 724935-001

This card has a maximum throughput of 867 MBPS on the 5.0 Ghz wifi band.

The card is readily available on Amazon or eBay.

Do your search by the HP Part #, not the model of the wifi card.

This would be the part number for the antenna in there now, according to the parts list.. 600050-001

http://partsurfer.hp.com/Search.aspx?searchText=G4A91AA

https://www.ebay.com/itm/600050-001-Hp-Wireless-Antenna-110-B20-500-164-P7-1423W/153148752280?epid=1...

The HP parts store doesn't stock that part number.

[bravobrown]

Excellent. Thanks again, Paul! 

That shouldn't be too difficult, and will be a lot cheaper upgrade than what I had in mind. 

Thanks for the links! 

Best regards,

Mark

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime, Mark.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Please post back and let us know how your wifi card upgrade went.

BTW...here are the W10 wifi and bluetooth drivers HP has for that model card.

W10 may install a newer wifi driver automatically, but you may need these for your initial connection...

Wifi:

7.35.351.0

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp78001-78500/sp78044.exe

Bluetooth:

12.0.1.921

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp75001-75500/sp75330.exe

[bravobrown]

Fantastic! I will definitely update this when I get everything installed . 

Thanks for these links as well!! 

Really impressed with the quick responses and insight.  

Thanks again! 

Mark 

[bravobrown]

Hi Paul, updates!

I finally got the wifi card in the mail and was able to install everything. Since the antenna and 16gb of RAM arrived first, I went ahead and installed those over the weekend. Simply adding the extra antenna bumped up the internet reception from a pitiful 27mbps to around 90mbps, so that made me optimistic.

Once I got the new wifi card installed, the drivers you linked to got it working, then I updated to the most recent version. Switching to 5ghz helped the speed a little more, but looked like it was going to take adding external antennas to get a decent signal. It then occurred to me that I never changed the new adapter settings, so I adjusted that to disable 20/40 coexistence, turned on beamforming, adjusted band preferences and capabilities (no setting for ac). There are tons of settings in there, but I was able to get my speeds pretty consistently up to 250-275mbps, which makes me a LOT more happy. Considering that my office is pretty far from the router I still may try swapping to external antennas, but this is livable.

Thanks so much for all the help finding a solution. It's too bad I can't get a 4x4 ac adapter in there, but this will keep me from pulling my hair out!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That is great news, Mark!

Glad to read everything went well for you, and that the wireless speeds have increased significantly.

Happy New Year!

Paul