Question BE 200 Intel MAIN AUX Black and Gray Cables Connectors?

[Erik343]

Hi,

I have antennas inside my laptop that are different for main and aux. The transmitter is a different shape than the receiver.
I have a BE 200 Intel WiFi wireless adapter installed inside my laptop.

This is a photo of the BE 200:

WiFi 7 Intel BE200 BE200NGW NGFF WiFi 7Bluetooth 5.4Card Internal with GX U1C9 - Walmart.com

Buy WiFi 7 Intel BE200 BE200NGW NGFF WiFi 7Bluetooth 5.4Card Internal with GX U1C9 at Walmart.com

www.walmart.com

I have a black cable and a gray cable inside my laptop. Where do I plug in the black and gray cables? I think I have the cables installed in backwards!

 

[Tech Junky]

It doesn't really make any difference. As long as they're connected it should perform just fine. If you have doubts test it for a day and swap them to compare.

 

[Erik343]

This is my laptop's antenna:

Genuine Lenovo Antenna 5A30S36097 W 21KK M+A

Buy Original Lenovo ANTENNA 5A30S36097 - Antenna W 21KK M+A from EMPR. Lenovo Authorised Parts Distributor. 12 Months Replacement Warranty.

store.emprgroup.com.au

You can see the antenna transmitter and receiver or AUX and MAIN are not the same.

I am paying somebody $50 to swap the antenna cables in my laptop because I have shaky hands. If you know which cable goes where that would save me money. Thanks.

 

[Tech Junky]

It really doesn't make a difference which is connected to which. I've swapped tons of wifi cards and even 5G/LTE. The 5G ones just need a broader frequency reception range than the wifi.

Where swapping the leads around would make a difference is if you had different DB values for the antennas. Common antennas are 3db and omnidirectional. The higher the DB number is the more focused the reception cone will be for greater distance.

 

[Tech Junky]

If you have doubts then open the laptop and take a photo and mark one of the leads with a permanent marker to indicate which is the main.

 

[Erik343]

it's ok, I already upgraded to the BE 200 without taking a photo, but CoPilot told me that the black goes to main and gray goes to aux. Can you confirm this? CoPilot is sometimes wrong.

 

[Tech Junky]

You already swapped the card and now you're paying someone to move the cables why?

If your speeds are consistent then why is this even an issue?

 

[Erik343]

one antenna is designed for transmitting and one is for receiving, and they are backwards. I can probably get faster speeds. Plus it's an expensive laptop, and I want it done right.

 

[Tech Junky]

They don't make antennas that only TX/RX.

 

[Erik343]

I thought that the BE 200 was 2x2 or 2T2R

 

[Tech Junky]

All laptop wifi cards are 2*2 these days.

 

[Tech Junky]

Anything beyond AC has been 2*2. There were some odd ducks with AC that had 3*3 and some desktop options that were 4*4 but, since Intel was for the most part the only game in town for AX/E they only went 2*2. Even the desktop option used the same M2 cards from Intel which limited the options to boost speeds. MTK/RTL have a couple of options years into the move beyond AC but they typically suck in terms of performance / compatibility.

I updated from AX200 > AX210 > AX411 > NCM965. Each one offered better speeds and the AX411 allowed for connecting to both 2.4/5 for a combined 1.7gbps in terms of real world speeds. The NCM is a BE card though but, being somewhat cheap I'm still weighing the option of a BE AP or configure the second NCM as an AP in my setup using hostapd. I used to run an internal setup with AC but, with Intel cards it doesn't work so well as an option so I got an external AP instead.

The issue with updating parts of the network though is you need to do it from end to end or at least internally for LAN speeds to take advantage of the upgrades. It doesn't help though to have high bandwidth if the data source can't keep up though either. You have to size the bandwidth to the data you expect. When I was running spinners I could get 400MB/s out of them which meant my baseline would need to be 5gbps on the network side to saturate the transfers. I could through Ethernet and more recently I upgraded the spinners to a NVME drive instead which hits 6.5GB/s. The drive now would mean upgrading to 100gbps if I was really trying to keep pace but, there's no option for 100gbps on a laptop but, I can use TB and get 20gbps out of it using a $20 cable between the machines.