Tweaker builds WiFi-ac-3×3 adapter in Windows laptop

By admin On Sep 9, 2015

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After the necessary research, Tweaker un1ty got a wifi-ac-3×3 network card working in his Clevo laptop. There are hardly any laptops with those cards and the user had to use an inf file from a full-size Asus network adapter, among other things.

There are laptops with WiFi-n-3×3 network cards; Intel offers its network card Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 for this purpose. There are far fewer models with a 3×3 antenna setup and Wi-Fi ac support. In order to satisfy the ‘eternally growing hunger for wireless bandwidth’, tweaker un1ty started looking for a WiFi-ac-3×3 network card to upgrade its Clevo W350STQ.

In the Pricewatch he got no further than the Asus PCE-AC68, which doesn’t exactly fit in a laptop, and dongles with those specifications are not yet available, but after a bit of searching he ended up with the BCM943460 from Broadcom, which meets the stated requirements. requirements met. After ordering from AliExpress and receiving it, it turned out to be a full-length mini-pci-e card, contrary to what un1ty thought. “So I had to cut some plastic out of the housing, but that took the keyboard out,” said the user.

Fortunately for him, there was enough space in the msata slot, where the card is now, in the words of the tweaker, ‘pretty neatly finished, especially since it shouldn’t even fit into the housing’. The next problem was to find the correct drivers. “Until I had a sudden hunch. The Asus PCE-AC68 also uses a broadcom 3×3 chip.” He found a driver version from which the inf file could be extracted and after installing the Clevo laptop recognized the adapter as an Asus PCE-AC68.

Un1ty has not yet been able to test the bandwidth with a 3×3 ac router. In combination with a 2×2-ac access point, the laptop achieves 600Mbit/s at 5GHz, but the system also did this in combination with the old Centrino 2×2 AC 7260/7265 card. “Although the upload with this card seems a lot more stable”, according to the user. “But the factors to be taken into account are still too large.”