determine if mini pci-e wifi card is compatible with motherboard

Question

I have an old Mini PCI-E wireless card:

Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230

I would like to upgrade this, but after briefly searching for a new PCI-E card I discovered specific cards are not compatible with all devices.

I have a Mecer W55eu, I would like to upgrade to a dual band wifi module with 5Ghz support.

TL;DR: How can I determine of a specific PCI-E card is compatible with my device?

Answer 1

PCI-e slots are backwards compatible. So a 3.0 card will work in a 2.0 slot. Also a smaller pci-e device will fit in any slot of its size or larger. For example a x4 card can fit in a x4, x8, or x16 slot.

Answer 2

In theory they are a standard - and outside some of the larger companies, which have a blacklist the cards themselves would just fit in the same slot and work.

Now the part(s) that concern me are antennae. Spaceman Spiff's a bit of an expert on this - so I'm going to defer to his answer. Essentially there's a good chance your antenna are designed for single band operation, and while 5ghz would work, your performance may be suboptimal. You might also have only one antenna rather than 2, 3 or more.

I've never seen the sort of antennae used in laptops, little flat pieces of flexible PCBs sold seperately either. So, it'll work but not as well as a laptop designed for it.

Newer units might use m.2 connectors but that's not PCIe and still newish. Its worth a cursory check, much like avoiding oldschool mini PCI cards for this application.