How to upgrade G wireless card to N?

Well, I've searched but couldn't find an answer. I have a notebook based on Clevo M540 series which uses Realtek 8187B wireless card, is it possible to upgrade to N wireless cards? I thought about Intel WiFi Link 5300 or 5100, but I think I will have problems with internal antennas, G only uses one or two tops, N uses three, correct? So, how to upgrade the antenna too?

Thanks in advance

 

I have a Intel 5100AGN and it only has 2 leads for antennas, and the display only has 2 inside of it. Getting the 5100 would at least be safe for you I believe.

 

Thanks for your input, I appreciate that.

So, the 5100 has 2 leads.. interesting.. does it work ok? Do you get decent signal/troughtput?

I guess the 5300 use 3 leads then.. am I correct? Do I really need the third antenna? I'm asking this because I have also other 2 laptops, one has Intel 4965AGN (Asus G2S-B2) and other has Atheros AR9285 (Asus EeePC 1005HA-H or P in some places) and wondering to upgrade both too, do you have any info about how much leads they have? Then I upgrade G laptop to 5100 and the other 2 to 5300.

 

I don't think the signal is too bad in my opinion, I usually get decent speeds anywhere I go, although its mainly in areas with strong signals. I think it depends on the antennas your computer has and what they're housed in that might affect it more, but I'm probably wrong on that.

I don't know anything about the 5300 or the requirement of if the card has 3 leads you need 3 antennas; I'm not much of a network buff that studies wireless cards, not yet anyway.

 

Thanks for your quick response.

Out of curiosity, I was doing some research and found that 5100 is perfect for my G laptop and also a perfect replacement for Atheros AR9285 because Atheros has only 2 leads also, just need to make sure it's the half mini card model. The 5300 has 3 leads indeed, but my 4965AGN has it too, so I can replace without problems.

I guess I'm all set, thank you so much!

 

Careful my friend... Sometime it's not as easy as it may seems.

I've done upgrading the wireless cards of my laptops several times, but the last one was not as easy as I would have thought. It was when I changed the stock 4965AGN in my Fujitsu laptop to 5300.

The procedure was pretty standard. First, I uninstall the old card from Vista Device Manager, then I turn off the laptop, swap the cards, turn it on again, and Intel driver (latest one of course) could detect and install the new card flawlessly. But... Don't know why it just cannot detect any networks.

I've done some experiments of uninstalling and reinstalling the driver or even the cards (I took the other 5300 from my other laptop), still nothing works. Last try was reinstalling the Vista Business 32bit OS and fortunately it works. Now all of my 3 laptops are using Intel WiFi Link 5300.

 

What I saw while researching is that has lots of 5300 clones, specially in ebay, so sometimes people think they bought 5300 but is a clone. But thanks for the advise, I will be carefull.

 

Yup! There are concerns of fake or ES version of 5300 cards being sold as genuine especially on eBay. Although it might not a 100% sign of the real ones, at least all of my 5300 cards which I bought from eBay have their MAC addresses match the labels. And most important is I don't have any negative issues of using them. Each could connect with speed up to 270Mbps to my 2.4GHz WRT310N or up to 300Mbps to my 5GHz WRT320N.

 

You got lucky! What do you mean by ES?

Also: I saw in your sign that you put 3rd antenna on your Dell, how did you do that?

 

You don't need to connect 3 antennas to the 5300. Connect the primary and secondary antennas, and leave the tertiary open. If you are brave you can install a third antenna by carefully disassembly the LCD bezel, sticking it in there and routing the wires. It's not too hard if you don't have a manual.

At best, especially with limited gain omni-directional laptop routed antennas, you really won't find a benefit to using a third antenna right now. Wait for true 3x3:3 APs. Marvell just released their chip and a prototype. That can net you a theoretical max of 450Mbps (over 300Mbps) without straddling dual bands and sticking to the better 5Ghz band.

Personally, I'm fed up with losers selling fakes/samples on eBay. It's not worth saving $15 to me. You can buy the Intel 5300 seperately through reputable retailers at least in the U.S. Not sure where you are, but I'm almost certain you can find them, too.

 

I'm in Brazil and that worries me a bit because I can't find those cards anywhere here, so I will need to buy from US.

As for the router, I'm trying to find a dual band router, but has to be supported by dd-wrt. Personal choice I guess..

 

ES = Engineering Sample.

I did buy one of ES 5300 sometime last year. It was when still hard finding half-height version of 5300 (for my Dell Studio). The label clearly states Engineering Sample. It had worse performance. I experienced disconnects even only 1-2 meters away from the wireless router. Then when I could get my hands on the real one, none of that issue occurs anymore. Even with the same driver.

I got the antenna the same time I bought the card. But the process of installing the 3rd antenna requires a lot of guts. Especially to put it in the sweetest spot, which is inside the top of laptop's LCD bezel along with the two other antennas, and route its cable down to the WiFi card require dissecting many of the laptop parts.




But actually, you don't have to put the 3rd antenna on the same position as I did. Installing it inside the edge of laptop's palm rest might be easier. At least, this is the place where Fujitsu installed the 3rd antenna in my LifeBook.

 

Got it! Thanks!

Well, this is a thing for the future, I'm not thinking on buying these cards right now. But if I buy, I think I would go for 2 5100 and one 5300, seems easier and 5100 has great performance for what I've seen.

 

I would suggest getting all 5300s, even without adding the 3rd antenna. Compared to 5300 and 4965AGN, 5100 is not only lack of 3rd antenna (which makes it unable to have 450Mbps connections with future 3x3 spatial streams wireless router), its uplink speed also far slower.

Max speed of:
4965AGN: Tx=300Mbps, Rx=300Mbps
5100: Tx=150Mbps, Rx=300Mbps
5300: Tx=450Mbps, Rx=450Mbps

Higher maximum transfer/uplink speed of 5300 & 4965AGN will be beneficial if you do transfer/share files between laptops.

Other than that, I also owned 5100 which I don't really like, since its speed fluctuates more/not as stable as the other two.

 

Really? Didn't know that.. so where did you bought your 3rd antenna?

Also I'm about to buy a dual band router (WRT320N or WRT610N) but I don't think it will support this new speed.

 

The eBay seller who sold me WiFi Link 5300 bundled it together with the antennas. Use this link to see list of antennas currently being sold on eBay.

You do know that WRT320N is non-simultaneous dual band, right? I bought it since I had already owned WRT310N, so I can use WRT320N for 5GHz band and keep using WRT310N to serve the 2.4GHz band.