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Raspberry Pi PCIe Database

Raspberry Pi PCI Express device compatibility database

ASUS PCE-AC51 802.11ac WiFi Adapter

ASUS PCE-AC51 802.11ac WiFi Adapter
CM4 Functionality Pi 5 Functionality Driver Required? More Info
Currently Testing Untested Maybe GitHub Issue

Description and Notes

This WiFi card supports 802.11ac, and has drivers available for Linux and Windows, at least, but I have had trouble getting these drivers running (or even installable) on the Pi.

Many of the forked Linux drivers won’t compile on ARM64 or ARMv7, so I have also tried using the card with a recompiled Linux kernel following my cross-compile guide, with the following module selected via menuconfig:

Device Drivers
  > Network device support
    > Wireless LAN
      > Realtek rtlwifi family of devices
        > Realtek RTL8821AE/RTL8812AE Wireless Network Adapter

This seems to load the kernel module (rtl8821ae), but the card won’t work as in the dmesg logs I get:

$ dmesg | grep rtl
[    5.122777] rtl8821ae 0000:01:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    5.181119] rtl8821ae: Using firmware rtlwifi/rtl8812aefw.bin
[    5.182443] rtl8821ae 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for rtlwifi/rtl8812aefw.bin failed with error -2
[    5.183980] rtlwifi: Loading alternative firmware rtlwifi/rtl8821aefw.bin
[    5.184083] rtl8821ae: Using firmware rtlwifi/rtl8812aefw_wowlan.bin
[    5.184215] rtl8821ae 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for rtlwifi/rtl8812aefw_wowlan.bin failed with error -2
[    5.184337] rtlwifi: Loading alternative firmware rtlwifi/rtl8821aefw.bin
[    5.189198] rtl_pci: Cannot allocate RX ring
[    5.189218] rtl_pci: tx ring initialization failed
[    5.189228] rtl_pci: Failed to init PCI
[    5.189357] rtl8821ae: probe of 0000:01:00.0 failed with error -12

See the linked GitHub issue for the latest status on this card.