After a CMOS reset it’s back in business.
Apparently, you don’t just un-power the board. You are to jab (carefully) the chassis intrusion switch 10 times. “You must press it slowly, so press 2 seconds. release, wait for the red blink on the Mainboard LEDs. repeat.”
And it just worked.
And uh …
I get good thermals!
But first, we must not get ahead of ourselves.
So, the inside look like this
To get to here, you must have the cooling pad be in a liquid state. The “cooling pad” melts around 60 degrees C, so you must put a load on the chip. I accomplished this by removing the fan and playing arras.io. Then loosen and remove the heatsink. It come off without too much trouble. The CPU will spike to 100 degrees, but if the thermal protection is anything to go by, it’s fine.
Then, you should probably lift that plastic shield off first, then clean up the mess. I didn’t do that, so I contaminated the plastic shield. I have it sitting on some waxed paper (sticker backing stuff)
I recommend using tape to clean up residue. You don’t want any on the outside of the CPU. It is literally metal, so it’s extremely conductive.
Tasty.
Now. You will be like, “what kind of paste do you use”?
Well, I will put it this way. I was expecting trash results, since you know. this liquid metal thing is intended to be good.
No. It just pulled 45W, 46W. About the same delta, actually. Maybe 1 degree or 2 closer.
I used this 10,000 year old dinosaur fossil paste.
It’s actually not bad. It “never dries out”, and I can stand to that. I have found this stuff on 22-year-old Xeons (Supermicro X5DA8 to be exact) in derelict workstations. As fresh as day 1.
The main reason is because this is from our electronics lab, so it’s on the house.
I just smeared this onto the thing, I didn’t bother removing the liquid metal interface thing (the thing with all the dots).
Interesting spread pattern. I mean the mounting pressure never have to be perfect. But this is actually … not amazing. I guess it works, I can pull 45W consistent. But if any of this thread goes by (almost 500! by this point), hm.
Bottom line:
I think Framework got scammed. The cooling sheet claims “72W/mK”, which is an order of magnitude higher than any paste. Results show … not that.
If you are having terrible thermals, maybe try re-pasting. But maybe talk to customer support first.