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    15x Intel 7260 Wireless AC Upgrade

    Discussion in 'Alienware M15x' started by LodestarRising, Dec 12, 2017.

  1. LodestarRising

    LodestarRising Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hey,

    Just installed a new Intel 7260 AC (with bluetooth 4.0) in my M15x to replace the old 5300 card.

    Only antenna connections 1 and 2 were used as the new card only has 1 and 2, I just left 3 dangling there.

    I have installed the intel drivers and the Wi-Fi works, however the signal and range seems a lot weaker - could this have something to do with the change in antennas and how do I fix it?

    Also it only seems to be using N Wi-Fi on an AC network, anyone figured this out?

    As for the bluetooth, it shows in device manager after installing the latest intel drivers, but has an error:
    "This device cannot start. (Code 10)

    STATUS_DEVICE_POWER_FAILURE"
    Any help would be greatly appreciated!
     
  2. King of Interns

    King of Interns Simply a laptop enthusiast

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    I think there is some kind of antenna adaptor that allows you to connect all three wires up properly. I havent done the upgrade yet so I am not sure exactly
     
  3. LodestarRising

    LodestarRising Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi King of Interns,

    I have searched for such an adapter however I haven't found anything. Would it be better to just completely remove the Wi-Fi card? I don't think the 7260 was designed to work with 1st gen intel cpus.
     
  4. y05h1

    y05h1 Newbie

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    I read that if you only connect 2 wires instead of 3 you end up having worse signals/range than with 3
     
  5. LodestarRising

    LodestarRising Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yeah it doesn't seem to have the same throughput on the 7260 with 2x2 as the 6300 with 3x3, I don't think the 7260 is the most suitable wi-fi card anyway, and there doesn't seem to be any 3x3 mPCIE AC cards.
     
  6. Schurke

    Schurke Notebook Consultant

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    Hmm... I quite literally did the same upgrade this evening using two wires rather than 3.
    No -noticeable- wireless reception issues on N (I don't have an AC router to test against). You're right though, throughput on N will be reduced somewhat from the theoretical maximums with only two antennas.

    The bluetooth however is definitely up and running (which is what I was looking for). I had to install the first link from... https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/75439/Intel-Dual-Band-Wireless-AC-7260
    ( https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...reless-Bluetooth-for-Windows-10?product=75439)
    I was able to connect a wireless keyboard immediately after installing the driver.

    ...that all said, I don't have any suggestions at this time - just a "works for me under the following conditions" anecdote.
     
  7. LodestarRising

    LodestarRising Notebook Enthusiast

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    That's interesting, I used the first two antenna wires (1 to A, 2 to B, C to nowhere) and got really bad network range on 2.4ghz and especially on 5.2ghz. I was using an AC network however the card only seemed to use 802.11N.

    For Bluetooth I used the same driver on windows 10 but the power failure status has never been resolved despite every attempt, does the 7260 require the bluetooth antenna connection?

    If it doesn't work at all I may just use both mPCIE slots for an eGPU and additional m.2 SSD (must be a crazy bottleneck).
     
  8. MZWiZard

    MZWiZard Notebook Consultant

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    ygohome likes this.