How stuck am I?

[Lochlan_]

I have a stock HP Horizon Blue laptop with a Ryzen 5 3500U, stock storage and memory, and stock network card. Being unable to upgrade the CPU, RAM and networking are my next two priorities. With very bad Wi-Fi, my laptop suffers immensely when doing anything more intensive than watching a movie on Netflix. I was considering an upgrade from the Realtek 8822BE card to the similar Intel AX200. My main concern here is a BIOS whitelist. I would also love an upgrade from the stock 8GB of 2400MHz DDR4 to something a bit better. Crucial's website states that I can put up to 32GB of 3200MHz DDR4, but HP has stated that 16GB of 2666MHz was the max. 

TL;DR is, I was wondering if an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi card and 32GB of 3200MHz of RAM would be compatible with the board.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I doubt that anyone will be able to give you a definite answer.

This is what I can offer.

The Crucial memory report is almost always right, and it is certainly not out of the realm of possibility that your notebook would take 32 GB of memory--hardware specs-wise.

The AX200...FWIW, the Realtek 8822 and 8821 wifi cards are no good. 

But you are lucky in that your notebook has two wifi antenna cables that could support an upgrade.

No one knows if there is a BIOS whitelist in your model or not.  We only get reports from folks that experiment with wifi cards.

This is what I have put together over the years...

All HP notebooks made in 2011 or earlier have BIOS whitelists.

Very few notebooks made in 2012 can have the wifi card upgraded.

Most notebooks made in 2013 or later do not have BIOS whitelists, with a few exceptions.

Two I know of for sure...the 15-ac0xx model series and the 15-ae0xx model series.

Here is some promising info that may tempt you to try an upgrade to the AX200...

Last month, I got a HP 15-ee047nr notebook with the newer Ryzen 4500 processor.

To my complete and happy surprise, there was an Intel AX200 in there instead of one of those crummy Realtek cards.

However, the memory is an integral part of the motherboard and cannot be upgraded.

Fortunately, it came with 16 GB of memory and a 512GB NVMe SSD.

Now, if you want to roll the dice, you can try the AX200 non-vPro card. 

It won't break the bank if for some reason it doesn't work.

https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Network-AX200-NGWG-NV-AX2002230-Retail/dp/B07ZVYKRW9