Wifi card replacement. Intel AX201 on HP GAMING 15 laptop does not boot/respond at all.

[SanGaming]

Hello,

I want to replace my wifi card with the Intel AX201 card because of Wifi6.

When i replace the card the laptop does not respond at all.

So nothing at all, the fans wont even turn on.

When i put the old card in then the laptop starts again as usual.

I have the Intel Core I7-8750H CPU.

I have the latest bios drivers.

Please help.

[BastianW · Accepted solution]

Some Laptops have a bios lock so that you couldn´t install non supported Wifi cards. You need to install only the one which are officially supported. From your posting it looks like that your device isn´t supporting the AX201.

When it comes to HP a general guide is no whitelists on notebooks made in 2013 or later, some models made in 2012 don`t have them, and all models made from 2011 and earlier do (as far as I know). Additional there are a couple of models made in 2015 that have whitelists, such as the 14-ac and 15-ac model series. -> See here

[SanGaming]

Thank you for your reply. That must be it.

I could not get it to work. Ordered the Intel AX200 and that one worked after installing the drivers.

The speed however on the Intel AX200 was lower then on the realtek AC that came with the laptop. I tried it with an Netgear Nighthawk Ax4 but the speed was not better then the AC card so decided to keep the old one.

Will return the wifi 6 card and router and try next year again. Thanks.

[BastianW]

The HP Gaming Pavilion - 15-cx0808nd is part from the HP Pavilion Gaming 15-cx0000 which contains here all the manuals.

If you open the manual here and open page 18 you can find the following two cards which are therefore official supported:

Realtek RTL8822BE 802.11 ac 2x2 WiFi + Bluetooth 4.2 Combo Adapter (MU-MIMO supported)

924813-855

Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 9560 802.11 AC 2x2 WiFi + Bluetooth 5.0 Combo Adapter (non-vPro, MU-MIMO supported)

L22634-005

However sometimes HP releases updates to the service manuals and add additional cards and infos. However as the first device hit the market in 2018 I do not think that they will release a new manual with additional cards as they focus on building newer models which support newer standards (more infos below).

However I think that you will not get a better speed with replacing "only" the WifICard. This is due to the fact that your notebook has only two antennas (2x2). Let me explain that: The Wlan 5 (AC) standard has a max from 433Mbit and WLAN 6 (AX) 1202Mbit per antenna. That means you can only get a possible speed from 866/867Mbit with WLAN5 (AC) or 2404Mbit with WLAN6 (AX) with 2 x 2 antennas (see here). If the device would be equipped with 4x4 antennas you could reach up to 1733Mbit with WLAN5(AC) or 4808Mbit with WLAN6(AX). However that's not the case with that device...

You might wish to reach a combination from WLAN 5 (AC) + 160Mhz + 1024QAM which offers a similar speed as WLAN 6(AX). However such combinations are quire rare.

You also should make sure that your router is using/offering the MU-MIMO Standard, which allows parallel connections (other non MU-MIMO devices switch between the devices every millisecond to handle them all). Keep noted that the MU-MIMO Standard in WLAN 5 (AC) supports only an download (no upload like in WLAN 6).

What I would try to perform would be the following:

1.) Buy a AX WiFi Router

2.) Buy an AX Wifi AccessPoint

3.) Optional: Buy an HP Dockingstation

4.) Connect the Notebook to the docking station and the docking station to the WifI AccessPoint via LAN wire (or the Notebook directly via LAN wire to the AccessPoint).