Understanding Dell Micro FF WiFi Antennas

buy the extended wifi antenna. 2 band.

or buy a USB wifi  (total wifi system) that can let you put the 2  antenna base up high./

why not just get a far far better card,  is the mirco PC devoid of PCI- slots OOPS IT IS.

I use ethernet here on all desktops,  I use wifi only for cell phone 4/5G backup here, wifi pain, zero here.

wired is best, no fiddling about with antanna's and guessing, what is inside any plastic antenna , me ever.

my guess if it is BT, the BT is fed to the 2.4gHZ antenna. BT is close in freq. BT =2.400 to 2.485 GHz

there is only ONE answer for this silly micro beast, below is it.

wow photos of inside is rare but wow zero room inside this PC, so all you can is change antennas, so do it.

yes you can put a better antenna here,

as you can see it is duck junk antenna,  3 usages, BT and 2 band WIFI.

as you can see it is not one thing there, but options above. new. dell grays out useful information

like where does the black wire go.>? hummmm white is antenna. I guess both do, (and is 3 band antenna)

that is all I can ferret out on any micro,  docs by dell are sparse.

put the longest 2 band antenna there, and my guess it will work perfectly.  9dBi rated,

or this and then get BT dongle. for rear USB jack

this is  very good, remove wifi,

or more.

a USB wifi ends the problem with micros and no space inside nor pci-e slots nor m.2 upgrades wifi.

so there I tried to cover all ways to get range.

if you like DIY,  like me,  and the fun in that, I have dish I made here. but

but see this search,  it will expand your horizons, (yes pun)

if you have range issues with wifi there are vast cures.

time or money or both cure all.

Thanks for your more focused analysis beyond the initial generic response.

In case it went without notice, much of the investigation to the hardware layout I had already done and is summarized in the bulleted points my opening post.

I should have added that (from reading Dell repsonses here) I am under the impression that the standard hardware for this model is to have only the internal antenna which is mounted somewhere under the plastic front faceplate (= must be dual band, right?) My machine is a factory refurb from the Dell outlet which must have originally been built with the option for an external antenna. I suppose as the next step I will just substitute a higher gain dual-band directional antenna for the external duckie and see how that goes.

My original purpose was also to get hard data on what bands the spuplied internal and external antennas are tuned for. Dell Support contacted me privately and asked for the details of my order. Perhaps then they will chime in, but I don't have high expectations.

I am having issue with my 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, would you kindly suggest how can I connect an external antenna to my new 7000 micro with factory set up ( Intel Wi-Fi-6E 2x2 AX211 Bluetooth 5.2 Wireless Card with Internal Antenna) as the wifi is not stable but seem good when I connect to a Asus ASUS USB-AC68 external wifi borrowed (to return) from room mate (to return). Somehow I had to connect the ASUS doogle directly to the back of this pc to be stable and it looks so fragile. I hope to have a screw on antenna and hopefully do not need to change the existing wifi card.

OHLC

New optiplex 7000 Micro should have come with an external antenna like this one.  It looks like a standard SMA antenna that you can buy somewhere if somehow you do not have it shipped to you from Dell.  Check your product spec to see if an antenna is or is not included.

redxps630

Thanks for the helpful tips, I will remove the plastic cover (like the below) tonight and hopefully there is a connection to screw standard SMA antenna which I will need to purchase.