After jumping on the obligatory cheap PC / Linux server bandwagon, I was looking into the obligatory WiFi install. I was initially concerned I was going to have to pay through the tooth for an OEM version of the of the card.
There seems to be a lot of chat on the interwebs of there being some BIOS locking involved restricting use to a few cards. Now whilst this is the case for some manufacturers this is simply misinformation - there is no whitelisting involved - it's just user error, you need to make sure you are installing the correct card!
In my research I had read in the Dell specs / instruction manual that their motherboards do not support CNVio - now I've tried to locate where I read this but sadly I've been unable to locate the reference for this, but I continue to look for it and will update this article once I've found it.
Whats the confusion?
The M.2 standard supports a number of protocols, this is the key to it's success with being able to be used for a large number of different purposes from storage to communications and even machine learning accelerators. One of the popular protocols which WiFi cards use is CNVio, now it just turns out that Dell's support for this seems to be a little lacking with the upshot being that there's a large bunch of cards which won't work on your Optiplex.
What card do I need then?
Well that's easy, just get a card which supports M.2 PCie USB. With this protocol the WiFi uses a PCIe spec bus and the bluetooth built into the card communicates via USB.
Supported cards
Here's a list of supported cards, I've personally tested the 9260 and AX210:
- Intel 7260 (Wifi 5 867 Mbps, BT 4.0)
- Intel 7265 (Wifi 5 867 Mbps, BT 4.0)
- Intel 8260 (Wifi 5 867 Mbps, BT 4.2)
- Intel 9260 (Wifi 5 1.73 Gbps, BT 5.1)
- Intel AX200 (Wifi 6E 2.4 Gbps, BT 5.2)
- Intel AX210 (Wifi 6E 2.4 Gbps, BT 5.3)
- Intel BE200 (Wifi 7 5.8 Gbps, BT 5.4)
Cards which won't work
- Intel 9560
- Intel AX201
- Intel AX211
- Intel BE201
