Will NUC11ATKPE work with the Wireless-AC 9260 adapter?

[Codrut]

The NUC11ATKPE has a Wireless-AC 9462 adapter which is very slow and it disconnects. I would get the Wireless-AC 9560 but it's out of stock and the 9260 is also cheaper. I don't know what are the differences between the 9260 and 9560 anyway. The question is if the Wireless-AC 9260 will work in NUC11ATKPE

[Codrut]

Never mind! I've ordered AX201.NGWG.NVW

[n_scott_pearson]

CANCEL YOUR ORDER! AFAIK, you cannot use the AX201 with this NUC. 

• The AC9462 utilizes the CNVio protocol to communicate with the chipset.
• The AX201, AX211 and AX411 utilize the CNVio2 protocol - which is NOT compatible with the CNVio protocol.
• The only CNVio card that you could consider upgrading to is the AC9560.
• Whether you could possibly use a non-CNVio card (like the AC9260, AX200 or AX210) is doubtful. What I can tell you is that this did not work in many cases for folks trying to upgrade away from the AC9560 with 3rd-party laptops and desktop motherboards that supported CNVio.

Sorry,

...S

[Codrut]

Should I get the 9560.NGWG.NV (WiFi Modules - 802.11 Intel Wireless-AC 9560, 2230, 2x2 AC+BT, Gigabit, No vPro) or 9560.NGWG  (WiFi Modules - 802.11 Intel Wireless-AC 9560, 2230, 2x2 AC+BT, Gigabit, vPro).

My NUC does not support vPro, but the No vPro is out of stock. Will the one with vPro work?

[Codrut]

Also, another question. According to this article:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000026155/wireless.html

The AX201 should work. Right? It's very confusing...

[n_scott_pearson · Accepted solution]

Without a TPS for this NUC, I can't be 100% sure - but yes, I believe that any of the 9560NGW cards can be used (vPro and non-vPro).

The article is, IMHO, quite confusing. They present the general CNVi architecture, but then fail to point out the fact that they had to replace the CNVio protocol with the CNVio2 protocol to support the later modules - and that these protocols (and interfaces and cards) are incompatible with each other.

IMHO, there are three distinct - and incompatible - M.2 Type E sockets,

• The non-CNVi socket, which supports the NGW N7265, AC7265, AC3165, AC7265, AC8265, AC9260, AC18265, AX200 and AX210  cards (note I didn't include any of the discontinued or Killer cards).
• The CNVio socket, which supports the NGW AC9461, AC9462 and AC9560 cards.
• The CNVio2 socket, which supports the NGW AX201, AX211 and AX411 cards.

The non-CNVi socket is the 'standard' M.2 Type E socket. Interestingly, I just noticed that, at some point, someone (Intel?) edited the M.2 page on Wikipedia to include CNVi as a feature of the 'standard' socket. If you go to PinoutGuide.com (and elsewhere), however, there is no mention of CNVi at all. With the incompatibilities that have been identified (and documented on the Communities site as well as other places), this is a bad precedent. Unless the 3rd-party laptop/motherboard implementers are making mistakes in their designs, there *is* a problem here; you cannot mix non-CNVi with CNVio or CNVio2 - which is too bad.

...S

P.S. I attached my cheatsheet that I use to keep track of Intel's Wireless cards. All mistakes are my own.

[Codrut]

I simply replaced the Wireless-AC 9462 with the Wi-Fi 6 AX201 and it worked right out of the box.

So, the NUC11ATKPE supports both the CNVio or CNVio2

[n_scott_pearson]

Thanks for letting us know; that's welcome information.

[Edit: Would be good to know if the same could be accomplished with the AX211/AX411 WiFi 6E modules!]

Unfortunately, we still know that there are PCs out there where this was shown to not be the case. Would be great to know what the problem was in these cases. Would also be good to know if there was something that Intel did to create/restore(?) this compatibility. Could it have been PCH-level incompatibility and was restored only in new gen? I would love to get the story...

...S

[Codrut]

Hi Scott,

You know much more than me on this subject. But what I noticed is that the physical pins are identical on the AC 9462 card and the AX201 card. The difference between the CNVio and CNVio2 seems to be if the CPU (possibly motherboard too) supports them. As we know CNVio means that Intel moved some of the WiFi processing inside the CPU to lower the cost. My speculation is that in 10th generation of CPUs when they introduced CNVio2 they moved even more processing inside the CPU. As such, my speculation is that, 10th generation and higher can support both CNVio and CNVio2 as they have inside the circuitry needed to support this wifi processing. In other words, CNVio2 is a superset of CNVio.

I might be wrong. It's just my speculation. But my cheap Intel NUC with maybe the cheapest 11th generation CPU (Pentium Silver) seems to support both CNVio and CNVio2.

Regards,

Codrut