adding wifi to b450m mortar

[shinegull]

I have a MSI B450m Mortar motherboard and an empty pcie x1 open.

 

I've been hearing about the new Wifi 6 cards from intel, AX200. but wondering what I would need to be able to run it on my motherboard, since i heard somewhere that the ax200 may not work with a ryzen motherboard, which seems contradictory to the x570 motherboards.

[Rainbow Dash]

It should work, if there is drivers for it and the pcie bandwidth to support it. But you should wait and see if a bios update is required. Also, some people say that WiFi 6 is still slower than a wired connection.

[F___M]

kinda pointless to install an AX class wireless card unless you have a AX class router.

[shinegull]

Hoping to change that router soon as well.

 

Actually planning on changing my entire body  network

[Niebla]

I bought a Gigabyte x570 Aorus pro motherboard with this wifi and it sucks, I have no idea how to fix connectivity issues. It disconnects from my wifi randomly and wlan report say mostly driver is causing network to disconnect. But I'm a noob and don't know what I'm doing, so maybe if you are changing router it will work for you just fine. Wish you luck!

[Donut417]

13 hours ago, shinegull said:

Hoping to change that router soon as well.

 

Actually planning on changing my entire body  network

Id wait on this. WiFi 6 is very new. Even the stuff coming out for it, might not support the full standard. Kinda like how we had Draft N back in the day. Vendors released what they thought the standard would be and not all the features we included. Your better off waiting for second gen AX gear, where they have most of the bugs worked out and more of the features implemented. 

[shinegull]

What would you recommend i get for a wifi pcie card right now then? Ill be planning on finishing this build by end of november, since im mostly wating on sales and deals

[moriel5]

What you had read about Intel WiFi was about the CNVi protocol, which the AX200 does not utilize (the AX201 utilizes it, though).

The CNVi protocol is a new Intel protocol (possibly based upon PCIe?) which requires support by the CPU (the MAC address is also dictated by the CPU, unlike normal PCIe WiFi cards).

 

As for support, while I already got an AX200 for my laptop, I recommend you to hold on until there are PCIe 2.0 M.2 to PCIe adapters, since on 5Ghz WiFi/Wireless-AX will probably go to at least 2.4Gbt/s, and PCIe 1.1 only supports up to 2Gbt/s.

 

For now, you can just get an Intel Wireless-AC 9260, since aside from WiFi 6/Wireless-AX support and what it entails, it will essentially give you the same thing as the AX200.

[shinegull]

On 9/9/2019 at 4:00 PM, moriel5 said:

What you had read about Intel WiFi was about the CNVi protocol, which the AX200 does not utilize (the AX201 utilizes it, though).

The CNVi protocol is a new Intel protocol (possibly based upon PCIe?) which requires support by the CPU (the MAC address is also dictated by the CPU, unlike normal PCIe WiFi cards).

 

As for support, while I already got an AX200 for my laptop, I recommend you to hold on until there are PCIe 2.0 M.2 to PCIe adapters, since on 5Ghz WiFi/Wireless-AX will probably go to at least 2.4Gbt/s, and PCIe 1.1 only supports up to 2Gbt/s.

 

For now, you can just get an Intel Wireless-AC 9260, since aside from WiFi 6/Wireless-AX support and what it entails, it will essentially give you the same thing as the AX200.

I've been looking at tests other people have been doing, and it seems you pretty much right about the speeds. I'll get something that has a removable card and just upgrade the chip sometime down the road. at that time, i'll just put the chip into a different computer, so a family member can have wireless access on their desktop.

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 9/10/2019 at 12:00 AM, moriel5 said:

I recommend you to hold on until there are PCIe 2.0 M.2 to PCIe adapters, since on 5Ghz WiFi/Wireless-AX will probably go to at least 2.4Gbt/s, and PCIe 1.1 only supports up to 2Gbt/s.

Pretty sure there is no such limitation, all current PCIe to M.2 adapters should be able to handle up to PCIe 3.0 and maybe even PCIe 4.0.

Also as there will be overheads, a WiFi 6 link of 2.4Gbit is never going to get real-world speeds that fast, so I doubt being stuck with PCIe 1.1 would even be an issue.  Most routers seem to expect you to connect to your LAN at 1Gig with 2.5Gig used for the Internet, so the chances of maxing out WiFi 6 on a single client is slim to none.

I found a datasheet stating the AX200 is already PCIe 2.1 gen 2 anyway.  Although the point that we do not know if the AX200 will fully support WiFi 6 is valid, but I doubt it will be as bad as Pre-N was where they were basically completely incompatible with the final specification.  That would be an utter disaster considering the number of laptops and motherboards being sold today as WiFi 6 compatible yet they contain the AX200, I'm hopeful the SoC on the AX200 is powerful enough to support the full feature set at least of gen 1.