End of the saga
It has been more than a month using the laptop any-which-way I want (keeping the 21 days time ticker in mind), and the laptop has behaved as expected.
One issue I found was the power button would not respond to first press at times (after the m/b replacement). However after I recorded it happenning a few times I realised I had to press but using full face of my finger against the button for it to register a press properly (as opposed to tip of finger or nail). Not sure if this is a windows bug/hardware bug or “works as designed”, but ever since I started using the full face of my finger, the issue went away. I am so exhausted with this process that I didn’t press any further after the first request for more info on possible power button issues got me an article about rearranging wires around the hinge, which can potentially cause automatic pressing of the button (the opposite of my issue).
Today I dropped the RMA package off at UPS and calling this saga closed. I’ve learned a lot from everyone on this thread. So thank you all, and thanks for bearing with me.
Will I buy another Framework? Probably yes, the extensibility features are still unbeatable when compared to other Libre h/w vendors.