Samsung Series 3 Laptop (Wifi Upgrade To 802.11ac) - HELP!

[callmewilson]

Hi,

I have a Samsung 17.3" Laptop (NP350E7C-A04UK). It was made in December 2012 a year before the wifi 802.11ac standard was released.

It's had few upgrades in the 9 years I've had it, such as more ram and an SSD. I did attempt to upgrade its CPU from the Pentium B970 to an i5 in the same generation but sadly the locked chipset meant a shutdown after 30 minutes although the CPU worked a treat, unfortunately had to go back to it's original CPU.

The SSD and ram upgrade no issue though. I'd like to upgrade its wifi card to a dual band 802.11ac from it's single band 802.11n I'd like to upgrade the wifi card to an 802.11ac one but the issue is compatibility and bios support or issues, also would I need to change out the antenna within the screen/lid?

When it comes to Acer, Dell and HP laptops information and support for those brands is fairly easy to source but Samsung bit harder.

The current card is "Atheros AR5B225" and this same part number appears is many brands of laptop. If I can find a close part to this which is 802.11ac i hopefully should be ok but may need to try various cards until I find one that works. I know laptop manufacturers have a parts white list which is how I've managed many upgrades to Dell's and Acer's in the past.

 

[Joe C]

You will have to go with a bios white listed wifi card. Laptop manufactures use the bios to only permit certain (if anything different at all) wifi chips. There are bios hacks that can be done in order to add a different card. Check with the brand and model on line to see what cards work currently for that motherboard first. Making unrecomended changes in your bios is always risky.

 

[callmewilson]

You will have to go with a bios white listed wifi card. Laptop manufactures use the bios to only permit certain (if anything different at all) wifi chips. There are bios hacks that can be done in order to add a different card. Check with the brand and model on line to see what cards work currently for that motherboard first. Making unrecomended changes in your bios is always risky.

I won't ever attempt hacks or unofficial bios mods, I'm sure there will be a directly compatible dual band Qualcomm card that by luck should work. I've managed to upgrade much older HP's, Dell's and Acer's to dual band no issues. The original wifi card is dated 2010 so already 2 years when my machine was built.