Installing an Intel 9260 Wi-Fi Card in a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2017

As a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2017 owner, I happened to get my hands on an Intel 9260 Wi-Fi card. Naturally, the first thing that came to mind was: let’s install it and see what happens.

Honestly, once it was in, it was recognized without any trouble and just worked. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi both had no major issues…

Wait a minute.

Actually, after using it for half a day, I found that it couldn’t recognize my router’s high-frequency band. In other words, the max speed was still 866, and once things got a little hot, stability problems started showing up…

Considering this card came from Taobao, it’s probably some leaked, sketchy hardware version from who knows where.

In the end, I swapped the original Intel 18265 back in, and the problem was solved.

So the short version: the new card works, but cheap goods ain’t good goods…