Upgrading wireless card in Alw 18 or alw 17 r1?

[faadi786]

Hey folks I was wondering if it is possible to upgrade the original wireless card which came with alienware 18 or alienware 17 r1 to a Atheros Qualcomm Killer N1525 Wireless-AC. The killer n1525 is currently being offered in the newer alienware 17 r2.

The problem I've ran into is...The killer n1525 seems to be using a smaller format. Is there any sort of adapter I can use to make this work? Also another problem I can see being an issue is the actual antenna connectors being to big for the killer n1525.

If any one has performed this upgrade or can guide me in doing this upgrade it would be appreciated. Thank you.

[jmonroe0914]

My initial thought is probably not, and from comparing pictures of the 1525N and the Intel 72060ac, it appears as though the 1525N was built for tablets and smaller laptops (while this is a common sense assumption, it could be wrong as well).

Just an FYI... the most stable AC wireless card, especially in regards to Windows 10, seems to always be the 7260ac. This is mainly due to the fact intel actively supports their hardware with continuous driver updates, while qualcomm and broadcom rely more heavily on OEMs to release driver updates.

• To provide a recent example, my AW18 came installed with the the Broadcom 4352 [Dell 1505], and dell packaged the Windows 10 driver package with 2 Windows 8 drivers that caused repetitive page fault in nonpaged area BSODs due to bcmwl63a.sys and another dll. Broadcom doesn't offer recent drivers through its support page, leaving the end user with a dilemma... luckily, I still had my Intel 7260ac from my old M18x.
  

Provided you configure the adapter properties correctly with the 7260ac, you should always get between 702 - 866.7mbps. If using a router with external antennas, such as my WRT1900ac, the antenna position does matter when it comes to AC wireless.

If you choose to go with the intel 7260ac, the model # is 7260HMWG

[DogOfWar]

Hey folks I was wondering if it is possible to upgrade the original wireless card which came with alienware 18 or alienware 17 r1 to a Atheros Qualcomm Killer N1525 Wireless-AC. The killer n1525 is currently being offered in the newer alienware 17 r2.

The problem I've ran into is...The killer n1525 seems to be using a smaller format. Is there any sort of adapter I can use to make this work? Also another problem I can see being an issue is the actual antenna connectors being to big for the killer n1525.

If any one has performed this upgrade or can guide me in doing this upgrade it would be appreciated. Thank you.

Hi, I'm currently looking into finding an adapter to use to add the 1525 also, I'll keep you updated if I find anything out. Also, let me know if you ever got it to work. Thanks.