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Can I upgrade the Inspiron 7459 AiO Wireless n card to wireless ac?
Wireless N seems really slow on my PC, I had computers before that had wireless AC and it was much faster than the one I have now.
Is it possible to upgrade to an Intel Dual Band Wireless AC or Dell wireless ac from wireless n? I seen wireless ac cards that can fit into the PC I currently have but I need to make sure that it will be compatible with the system.
Thank you.
RoHe
10 Elder
10 Elder
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March 20th, 2017 16:00
Version of Windows? Do you have the lasted WiFi driver for the 'n' card?
You should be able to upgrade. The Dell specs for this model list 'n' and 'ac' wireless, but 'ac' was probably an optional upgrade. So you need to know the specs for the wireless M.2 slot. And the card needs to be compatible with whatever version of Windows is running.
You could get a USB>WiFi dongle instead of an internal WiFi card. Either way, you need a router that's compatible with 'ac'.
Have you tried changing some of the driver settings for the 'n' card in Device Manager? Can you change the 2.4 GHz channel the PC and router use to communicate? If the current (default) channel is crowded, even if it's from the neighbor's WiFi, that can slow the speed.
Is distance to the router an issue? And keep in mind that 'ac' typically has a shorter working distance than 'n'.
11tarbas
47 Posts
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March 20th, 2017 17:00
Mine's currently on Windows 10 home and yes mine has the latest driver for the wireless n card.
This is the spec and exact look of the wireless card my PC has at the moment:
img2.parts-people.com/.../KJTH7a1.JPG
Will any wireless ac card be compatible with my system if it has a similar fitting like this one?
I tried driver settings in device manager, no improvement.
The wifi at the bottom right hand side of my screen shows that it's always at full signal, I never had low signal issues or slow browsing speeds with the previous PCs I owned from Lenovo and Acer that had the intel dualband wireless ac cards.
My router is currently wireless g but I never seen any slowdown with the PCs I had with wireless ac cards built in it, it's just with this one with the wireless n that I noticed slowdowns with browsing.
11tarbas
47 Posts
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March 20th, 2017 17:00
I'm currently on Windows 10 Home and yes it has the latest wifi driver for the n card.
Ok so how do I know the exact specs for the wifi card? I checked in the system's manual for the fitting shape and I saw other ac wireless cards with the same fitting. The one that my PC has at the moment looks exactly like this: (dell wireless 1801 802.11bgn):
img2.parts-people.com/.../KJTH7a1.JPG
I tried changing the 2.4ghz channel and router but it makes no difference, browsing just on this PC is still slow, and I don't think the range where the router is, is the cause of the problem. It shows full signal in the wifi icon on the bottom right screen.
If you could help me out, could you reference me any links to wireless ac cards that would be compatible with my system? Thanks.
(I had other computers before from different manufacturers such as Lenovo and Acer, they had wireless ac cards and they worked fine and fast with my wireless g router, sorry that I forgot to mention the wireless standard for my router which was wireless g, it's with this wireless n card where I noticed some slowdown.)
11tarbas
47 Posts
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March 20th, 2017 17:00
Mine's currently on Windows 10 home and yes mine has the latest driver for the wireless n card.
This is the spec and exact look of the wireless card my PC has at the moment:
https://img2.parts-people.com/products/KJTH7a1.JPG
Will any wireless ac card be compatible with my system if it has a similar fitting like this one?
I tried driver settings in device manager, no improvement.
The wifi at the bottom right hand side of my screen shows that it's always at full signal, I never had low signal issues or slow browsing speeds with the previous PCs I owned from Lenovo and Acer that had the intel dualband wireless ac cards.
My router is currently wireless g but I never seen any slowdown with the PCs I had with wireless ac cards built in it, it's just with this one with the wireless n that I noticed slowdowns with browsing.
RoHe
10 Elder
10 Elder
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March 21st, 2017 12:00
Your problem may actually be that old wireless G router. It's s-l-o-w compared to an N router. Wireless G is only 54 Mbps, and wireless N is ~10x faster. But your N card can only talk to the router at slow G speeds because the router doesn't speak "N".
N also uses a wider channel width than G so that makes N faster too. And N has better security than G.
Even if you upgrade the PC to an 'AC" card, it still will only be able to talk to the router at G speed. So unless you upgrade both the PC and router to "AC", you may be wasting your time, money, and security.
11tarbas
47 Posts
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March 21st, 2017 16:00
Ok, I'll be soon going on fibre optic which should hopefully provide higher download and upload speeds and I think it would be wireless n or AC (I'm not sure yet).
So if I upgrade my router from wireless g to wireless n or ac, would the web browsing speeds improve on my PC even with its current n wireless card?
Thanks
RoHe
10 Elder
10 Elder
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43.6K Posts
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March 21st, 2017 19:00
FiOS speed has nothing to do with wireless 'n' or 'ac'. Wireless speed only depends on the router and WiFI card. So having fast FiOS and a slow router and/or slow WiFi card will still be slow.
Right-click the WiFi icon on the task bar and open the Network screen. On that screen click the link for your network name. What link speed is reported? That will tell you how fast the PC and router are talking to each other. G has max of 54 Mbps, so I'm guessing you're at or slower than 54 now. (NOTE: The bars on the WiFi icon only measure signal strength, not speed.)
An 'ac' router will certainly talk to an 'n' WiFi card faster than a 'g' router, but the 'ac' router can't talk to the 'n' WiFi card at 'ac' speeds, because the 'n' card doesn't speak 'ac'.
If it were my choice, I'd upgrade to a dual band 'ac' router first and try it out with your 'n' WiFi card. You can always update the WiFi card later, if this combination still isn't fast enough for you. 'n' is only 2.4 GHz so the 'ac' router has to be dual band with 2.4 and 5 GHz.
Be sure you know if your new FiOS connection requires only a router or if it requires a router-modem, before you buy anything.
And you might have to change channels to find one that's not crowded when you set up the new combination, but that isn't hard to do.
And if you have an 'ac' cell phone or other 'ac' devices, you can connect them to the 5 GHz band on the 'ac' router so they won't compete with the 'n' WiFi card for bandwidth on 2.4 GHz.
Do your homework so you buy a router(-modem) with good speed, security and reliability. Only you can decide how much to spend, and that will depend -somewhat- on whether you're streaming video to the PC, etc or just surfing the net and reading email...
speedstep
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
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47K Posts
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March 23rd, 2017 09:00
Good Tri band Wave 2 802.11AC Routers are $250 to $450.
USB AC600 dual band wifi adapters are $35 or less.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833315136
https://www.walmart.com/ip/32106870
https://www.walmart.com/ip/37517519