FW16: Wifi 7 (Qualcomm QCNCM865) on Win11 - including link to driver

Framework Laptop 16
1

Hi there,

I’m new to the community and I bought a FW16 in batch 4.

I was upgrading my home network to Wifi7, and I wanted to upgrade my FW16 to Wifi7.
I read through the forums looking which applicable M.2 WLAN module. There were a lot of posts, and I saw that some people were having mixed results with various chipsets. Most of the posts were from people running Linux distros, which wasn’t really relevant (driver/software-wise for me).

I took a chance and purchased a Qualcomm QCNCM865 WLAN module and installed it in my FW16. It took a bit of digging to find a compatible Win11 driver.

I wanted to share that I had success with the following:
AliExpress (non-affiliate link): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006147470595.html
Link to Driver: https://us.msi.com/PC-Component/MSI-HERALD-BE-NCM865-WI-FI-7/support

I found the driver by first looking for newer laptops / devices that have the same chipset as mine (in this case a MSI Herald Wifi 7 card), then searched their support sections for the compatible driver - as Qualcomm are OEM only and do not provide drivers direct to public.

I hope it helps someone save some time.

5 Likes
2

Definitely going to have to keep this in mind. I just recently moved and had to buy a new wireless router and went with a WI-FI 7 router. This already provides an upgrade to my FW16 since it comes with a WI-FI 6E module but I’d like to upgrade that to WI-FI 7 in the future.

3

Going to give this a try on my FW 16. Thank you for posting the driver link!

4

Update on this. Swapped out my chip today and it is working great!