Compatibility issue?

[lfk]

Hi All,

 

I am rocking a pretty old mini-itx MB (https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/H87I/Specification) that has a 2.4ghz mini pcie wifi card.  I just bought 3 x mini pcie 5ghz wifi cards to upgrade this machine and a few laptops (all just as old or older).

 

My issue is the 5ghz card do not show up at all in device manager.  Not even as an unknown device.  Did all the usual things and updated the BIOS to the most recent (which is still a few years old) but nothing.  The card doesn't appear in BIOS either (although I'm not 100% sure the BIOS should be reporting anything in the mini pcie slot anyway).

 

The 3 x 5hgx cards all work in laptops.  Is this just a MOBO compatibility issue and I am out of luck?

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, lfk said:

The 3 x 5hgx cards all work in laptops.  Is this just a MOBO compatibility issue and I am out of luck?

Possibly, but I honestly would have expected it to work.  I even removed the WiFi and put a SATA card in an old ITX board to use it as a NAS, it should just be a plain miniPCIe slot.

Did you test one of the cards you confirmed working in a laptop, back in that motherboard?

[lfk]

23 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Possibly, but I honestly would have expected it to work.  I even removed the WiFi and put a SATA card in an old ITX board to use it as a NAS, it should just be a plain miniPCIe slot.

Did you test one of the cards you confirmed working in a laptop, back in that motherboard?

Yep tested.  I in fact took a working card from a laptop (running linux but still works) and put it into the PC.  Nothing in BIOS and nothing detected in Device Manager.  I have even put other 2.4ghx mini pcie cards into the motherboard and they are picked up.  Hence my possible conclusion of a compatibility issue.  Wish the vendor could confirm or not and save me the pain of keeping trying.

[Alex Atkin UK]

42 minutes ago, lfk said:

Yep tested.  I in fact took a working card from a laptop (running linux but still works) and put it into the PC.  Nothing in BIOS and nothing detected in Device Manager.  I have even put other 2.4ghx mini pcie cards into the motherboard and they are picked up.  Hence my possible conclusion of a compatibility issue.  Wish the vendor could confirm or not and save me the pain of keeping trying.

Its certainly odd, they dont usually have a whitelist on motherboards only laptops.

[lfk]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Its certainly odd, they dont usually have a whitelist on motherboards only laptops.

Exactly, which is why I didnt think there would be an issue with the desktop.  Raised it in MSI forums also maybe i'll get lucky.