Things I should know for upgrading from 11th gen intel -> 7040 amd

Framework Laptop 13
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Hello! I have an 11th gen framework with these specs:

  • Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX210 No vPro®
  • DDR4-3200 - 16GB (2 x 8GB)
  • 11th gen Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7

I want to upgrade to an AMD Ryzen™ 5 7640U, and as far as I understand I will need to also NEED to upgrade the ram, so I will get the upgrade kit with:

  • 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR5-5600
  • AMD Ryzen™ 5 7640U (Mainboard)
  • (pottentially) AMD RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E

Is there something else I need? My os is Linux, so I am not worried about windows keys. Also do I need the new network card? Is it really a big upgrade/ necessary or just a nice to have?
Please let me know of anything I should know.

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You will be able to reuse the wireless card.

Everything else you listed is correct.

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How big of an upgrade is the upgraded wireless card?

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It’s not an upgrade. It is a sidegrade (some consider it a downgrade) that may perform better in some situations but worse in others.

Intel recommends that Intel WiFi cards be used with Intel CPUs and AMD recommends that AMD CPUs be used with AMD WiFi cards, however there is no technical reason that should matter (some Intel WiFi cards, like the AX201 and AX211 exclusively work with Intel CPUs, but the AX210 is universal).

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Thanks, Very good to know.

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I did a similar transition, the only thing that surprised me was the AMD board ships with secure boot enabled so all your EFI files will fail to launch until you’ve disabled that. Otherwise, it went smoothly with the only hardware changes being the ram and motherboard.

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I recommend keeping the Intel Wifi. The driver is more mature and the speed should be about the same. If you want to reuse the old mainboard in a separate case or whatever, you might want to buy another AX210 from your favourite online shop.

That said, my AMD Framework came with the AMD RZ616 and I haven’t had any problems with Fedora 39 yet.

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Well looking at the be200 that isn’t a surprise, the ax210 works like a charm in both but the be200 doesn’t post on the amd and if you plug it into a egpu enclosure and connect it to the amd it hard crashes the system XD.

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In theoretically speaking it does have a little upgrade, but you will not feel it when you using it

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Hi, I am going down the same path with exactly the same components. In my case, I transferred the SSD from the original mainboard to the new one since I want to keep using Win11. Unfortunately, after booting up it seems that the laptop no longer detects a network card. I swapped the network card back to the Intel one and still have the same problem. I’ve made sure that the antennas are seated properly in their designated, marked spots. I can’t quite figure out what else I might be missing here. I’ve double-checked that nothing else is out of its place. Anyone else got any suggestions I can try to diagnose what is going on?

EDIT: To clarify what I mean by “no longer detects a network card” – I mean the Win11 login screen shows that I am offline with that globe icon and when I click it, there is nothing in there except for the airplane mode tile which is disabled. I have tried to toggle the airplane mode to see if that would “kick it” but no dice on that one.

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Maybe you need to get Windows 11 drivers for the AX210 from Intel.com.
It might be these:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/products/204836/wireless/intel-wi-fi-6e-products/intel-wi-fi-6e-gig-series/intel-wi-fi-6e-ax210-gig.html?wapkw=AX210

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Yeah so it turns out that I needed to install the Framework driver bundle while I still had the Intel board on. The driver bundle installer is smart enough to only pre-install the Wifi driver and then quit. This allowed me to switch the mainboard and the network card to the RZ616. Then when I booted up Win11 with the AMD mainboard and the RZ616, Wifi networks were discoverable.

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