For anyone coming here in the future looking for a way to get a standalone AMD Mainboard to work without ever touching a Framework laptop it is possible. I’ll break down the steps of getting it to work below. Few caveats and things to note… Most things I tried over and over again before completing the step to make sure it worked consistently so if I say something it happened multiple times for my setup. A big thing is that no matter what I tried I could not get it to display anything on the screen before standalone mode was enabled if I had an SSD installed. Another major caveat is that at least for the USB-C display (could be different if you have/use an HDMI/DP card) is that I tried every single port and the only one that worked for display prior to having the OS installed was the bottom right port. None of the below steps worked for me if I used any other port for display.
This was done with the AMD 5 7640U in the Framework/Coolermaster case with 16gb of DDR5 RAM and the boot drive removed.
- Ports Used:
- Top Left: Keyboard
- Bottom Left: Power (60w framework adapter)
- Top Right: Ethernet expansion card, followed by USB-C drive for installer
- Bottom Right: USB-C to Caldigit Element Thunderbolt dock to USB-C monitor, I did test it with USB-C straight to the monitor (non-thunderbolt USB-C monitor) and that seemed to work exactly the same, both provide power so to not confuse the initial boot do not plug in until the board is booting properly
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Getting it to boot
It has been pointed out in the forum before that you need to wait for the red/blue “storm” of lights on both sides to finish before trying anything. Mine never ends (left for many hours) so I decided to try some things and from my testing it doesn’t matter how soon after you try to boot, plug it into AC for the first time and you can go through this process. The mainboard refused to boot consistently so with the monitor unplugged and only the keyboard and power plugged in you need to press the power button and see if it starts a proper boot sequence. The red/blue lights will have an irregular pattern at some point if it shuts itself back down and doesn’t work, the reason I left the ethernet expansion (no ethernet plugged in) in is that makes it easier to tell if it is working or not. The ethernet card will flash its lights only once if the boot process failed. If it worked properly the card will flash more than once (time between the flashes but it won’t happen ever again if the boot failed). You’ll need to wait 10-20 seconds between each attempt as it won’t try to boot again if you do it too early. At some point (seems to be 1 in every 5-10 attempts will be a proper boot) it the red/blue flashing will stop and it’ll go through the post LEDs and settle on the standard white/light green power LED on the side of the board providing power. This should be on the side you have your power adapter in, this does not work (confirmed for me at least) if the power is on the side of the monitor which is why you leave it unplugged. -
Display/Standalone Mode
Get the display plugged in right away after the power LED comes in, also don’t try to hammer anything on the keyboard to get into the BIOS it doesn’t matter at this point. The first thing that will pop up (it will go away if you don’t get to it right away so make sure to do it now) is a screen saying it detects a the board might need to be in standalone mode and asks if you want to change it to that. Use your keyboard to accept the change to standalone mode (if you don’t do this you’ll have to start over). The board will look like it is rebooting at this point but the display never comes back up. You have now got standalone mode to work but it is still gonna hate being consistent, the only way I got it to work again was to disconnect from power and starting again from step 2. Remember to disconnect the display. -
BIOS
I needed to get into BIOS before SSD/OS installation, if you don’t need to adjust secure boot you should be able to skip this but I didn’t try it so YMMV
At this point you’ll have repeated step 2 to get it to do a proper boot again (still keep the SSD out at this point, I did try with it in and I never got anything on the display) but the difference this time is as soon as the red/blue is done and the power LED comes on you’ll connect the monitor and hammer F12 to get into the BIOS. If all went well you’ll be at a BIOS screen. In the advanced settings disable Secure Boot if you need to (I had to as I’m installing ProxMox) before saving and exiting though I’d change any other settings in the BIOS you want to as well. The only other thing I changed myself was the power on AC setting. At this point you can save and exit. -
SSD Install/Setup
At this point disconnect power and your monitor. Install your SSD to the board and close the case back up. Plug your flash drive with your install media into the top right port (so remove the ethernet card if you had it in there) and keep your keyboard in place (top left port) but keep your monitor disconnected. Since you disconnected from AC you’ll get the red/blue LED storm again but we’ve all been here before so repeat step 2. If your USB has an LED you’ll get feedback from that (mine does) similar to the ethernet card the LED on the USB should go off pretty quickly if the boot is failed but will stay on if it is a going to be a good boot. Once the power LED comes on plug your monitor in and wait for something to show up on the screen. I tried this 5 times (yeah I know but I had to make sure it worked every time for peoples
) and it took anywhere from 1-5 minutes (just random I guess) for the screen to show the install screen from my flash drive. So just walk away at this point, hopefully you come back to an install screen. -
Working?
At this point you’ll have finished installing your OS to your SSD and you’ll have a working mainboard without ever having touched a mainboard case. I no longer get the red/blue storm no matter what I do. I can unplug from power, leave unplugged, go back to it and it just boots like a normal computer. Annoyingly boot on AC power doesn’t seem to be working but as long as I press the power button it boots into the OS in seconds. Power directly from the dock or monitor works on its own now too and still shows on the display. So any inconsistent boot issues should no longer exist at this point for you too (hopefully).
I guess let me know if you have any questions, but I think this was a pretty thorough guide so I don’t know how much help I’ll be beyond this unless I just left something out. I’m not planning to wipe my own OS to troubleshoot anything else at this point. I did a lot of testing in between each step to get to a working system so I’m good with staying in this state 
Either way hope this helps someone!