A 13 inch is convenient to carry around.
Personally, a 13 inch does everything I needed to do. However, if it’s a 15 inch, then I will be asking for a lot more than a bigger screen.
number pads (like those hp ones)? 2.5 inch HDD bay? optic drive? two slots of NVMe instead of one? MXM discrete graphics? WWAN (bring your own 4G modules)?
Effectively many of the features of other 15 inch that effectively make them aircraft carriers.
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somewhat agree with the first (wide speaker grills would be a nice alternative to numpad) definitely agree with the second and third, but I’ve been very vocal against MXM cards due to their limited market currently, and sure to the WWAN.
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Partly because there wasn’t real push toward modular replacement of graphics, and a very extremely slight decrease in performance through the connector.
But if you look at it, MXM (replaceable) graphics adhere to the Framework philosophy in every single way. Since Framework will probably be making laptops with discrete graphics they can also be making discrete graphics chips and connectors and separate the two boards, just like how Dell seem to be the only one making those MXM boards. The cost on the connector, however, will probably be reflected in their slightly-more-expensive pricetag (of about $10), ever-so-slightly more thick (remember, heat pipes are still thicker than the connector) and the ever so slightly larget footprint (this is mostly true)
But then, excluding everything from the motherboard (attaching them via connectors) allow for cheaper motherboard replacements in case something fails or in the case of CPU upgrades.
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I don’t really want to get into this again like I did in another thread where someone advocating for MXM GPU’s called eGPU’s over thunderbolt “extremely niche” (a bit of a “pot calling the kettle black” situation in my opinion) but here we go.
What you are not considering is the robust power delivery that would need to be built into new Framework mainboards to account for up to the highest power card you could fit in the laptop. this would raise the base price of the mainboard due to more (and most likely more expensive) components.
if mainboards only had to be built to accommodate a certain dGPU and its power requirements, the cost of the mainboard can be kept down and the “option” for higher performance can be accounted for by pairings with higher end processors on different more robust mainboards (all soldered).
Second reason is that Clevo is the ONLY one with current-gen MXM laptops and that brand already provides these laptops to the big names. Why would Clevo want to sell their stock of MXM cards to a little company that is looking to directly go against their other customers business practices, with a laptop design that Clevo was in no way a part of making therefore cannot claim royalties like other products. The business side of tech can be extremely cut-throat. the less toes Framework steps on as they carve out their spot in the market, the better off they will be.
Reason 3: MXM takes a full x16 PCIe lane. with the additional x4 NVMe interface, and a x1 mini-PCIe for WiFi, there aren’t enough lanes left for USB4/TB4. so say goodbye to high-speed, easily reconfigurable port options on current mainstream CPU’s that have direct lanes which is what laptops tend to rely on.
Reason 4: Once you are done with an MXM card and maybe found an upgrade, what do you do with the old one? You can attempt to sell it but good luck finding a market. MXM cards can’t be repurposed for desktop use so they cannot find a second home there. ultimately they would become E-waste that fills a niche use case but otherwise go against Framework’s MO of sustainability at the benefit of modularity.
Reason 5: More power. Until the new spec for USB4 comes online and trickles down through new products. USB-C is limited to 100W PD. this won’t power a GPU that needs upwards of 120W, so Framework would have to go back to the ancient barrel jack for future high-power notebooks, decreasing inter-compatibility in their own product stack (again, not part of their MO).
that last reason and the first make it sound like I’m completely against Framework’s vision of an upgradeable laptop. but I’m not, I swear. I would rather see a product that is designed to last for years as is, but also capable of operating outside of it’s use case with the same level of simplicity. incorporating the mainboard into a SFFPC would be harder if I had to engineer an MXM GPU cooling solution into the enclosure, for example. I don’t want to upgrade my CPU and GPU of my laptop on a bi-annual cycle like my desktop, but I do want to upgrade how my laptop connects to the myriad devices I have or could have in the future. It’s about having the base framework to build off of. not build into.
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Yeah.
if the computer is 4x 4 lane thunderbolt (which is 16), plus a 4x PCIe for NVMe (really, I have been using a SATA SSD for 4 years and there are no siganificant advantages from this difference aside from cost) this brings a total of 20. Plus a 1x or a 2x to the WLAN/BT combo and maybe a WWAN and we have 22 (or 24).
Internal graphics is pretty nice, although if we have 4x thunderbolt I think it’s also quite nice. We can however make the compromise of removing thunderbolt capability on two port and slow the other two down to two lanes (this will give us 12 lanes and some elbow room), but I guess it’s a stretch maybe a bit too far.
I would go with Thunderbolt and bet on the integrated graphics (who are performing surprisingly adequate)`, even though eGPU is almost a total scam ($200 plus on whatever gpu you fancy and a separate psu)
mxm to pcie is not too far a stretch. But I also agree that replacing the gpu and the cpu together is not a completely unreasonable thing to do.
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This conversation feels pretty familiar
At least for me the conclusion of our discussion was that MXM is only possible when nvidia and amd decide to support it for many years with their future GPUs. Maybe it would also be best to wait for the 180 or 240 Watt specification of USB-C is released. The remaining issues of a MXM design can more or less be circumvented. I stoped our discussion since i felt like we both mentioned all arguments we had. I didn’t want the discussion to go in an endless circle
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+1 to Hoping for a 15" (3:2) aspect ratio.
Also would be great to be able to reuse as many components from the 13.5" in a chassis upgrade: Very in line with the philosophy, I feel.
It sounds like multiple types of keyboards (w/ and w/out numpad) would solve a lot of the healthy conflict above 
Ideally we get a bigger battery for the 15" and maybe an optional dedicated GPU if we’re lucky.
Officially (mostly for the reason that there is only this amount of pins and therefore contact area on the socket) they limit the power to 100W.
Dell pushed the boundary a bit by making a 130W USB-C brick and have it deliver those extra 30W ONLY when connected to a compatible Dell laptop on a designated (high power) charging port. But the idea is that it is unsafe to go any higher.
My entire MXM argument is that they allow us to swap out gpus. They can still have the, say, 50W limit (which mean you can only droll at those big bad rtx) and … well, offer room for expansion when a user like me who is on budget purchased a device without a GPU but realized they dont quite have the oomph to do what they needed down the road. Or to keep CPU upgrade costs down because that old RX 560 is still reasonably capable.
I agree the PCIe bottleneck is more significant, but I also disagree because I think a 15 inch should inherently be a very capable platform (just like many other laptops from many other companies) with discrete graphics – MXM or not.
And thus, with discrete graphics, it make sense to say that we don’t need the full-blown 4x TB4 because we already have a big screen and a big punch (and big everything). So we can use with things like some fixed USB-As, a ethernet jack, and a thunderbolt. however as said, we don’t want those stupid usb-pd only ports, but without a barrel jack it’d be more difficult since we are on a “PCIe budget”. Because we won’t be fitting any modules on a non-thunderbolt port but we don’t really need thunderbolts to start with.
so down this road, it’s safe to say that we aren’t really going to be fitting modules on the 15 inch.
Or maybe we do, however we can only choose between USB-C and USB-A for the two USB ports and … well, a USB-C or a Displayport for that one thunderbolt, and a fixed (or rather a required) USB-C for charging on a dedicated port.
Dell increases the current flow to 6.5 ampere. Honestly i already don’t feel well with pushing 5 ampere throw those tiny connectors on the usb c cable. Some cheap cables can already get very hot at that current so i’m worried about the connector. You would also need special usb cables that are at the very least rated for 6.5A current. I personally don’t like it when manufacturers like dell ignore the official specification and make their own proprietary one.
Not sure if 50W MXM card would make that much sense. iGPUs are getting powerful enought to make the lower end GPUs like an nvidia MX450 almost obsolete. With the current development the entire sub 50W space is going to be replaced by more efficient iGPUs sooner or later. The amount of PCIe lanes of intel Tiger lake cpus is actully more than enough. They offer 20 PCie 4.0 lanes in an 1x8,3x4 configuration. Chipset also offeres around 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes at full bandwidth. You can connect a MXM card to a slot with only 8 PCIe 4.0 lanes without getting into any bandwidth issues. You still have enough PCIe lanes for 4xTB4 and one m.2 slot.
The main selling point of the framwork laptop is that you have expension cards where you can decide which ports you want and where you want them. It would make a lot of people sad if they give that up.
That’s nice. So instead of a 16 lane MXM we will have a 8 lane instead.
Correct. But it does not make sense if we can do all the work of a 15 inch in a 13 inch if all we rely on is the iGPU of the CPU. This is coupled with the fact that with proper engineering, you can have 25W of thermal cooling in even a 9 inch chassis like the GPD WIN Max)
And thus, if all we rely upon is a one-chip solution, we might as well not have a 15 inch in the first place since the 13 inch is adequate. Although right now, I will very much prefer a dual-m.2 slot chassis.
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Sounds like you fear that a iGPU only 15" laptop would become obsolete because of 13" laptops. Unlike 9" or even 13" laptops you can use 45W+ cpus in a 15" laptop. The perfromance of a laptop is still mostly determined by how good the cooling solution is. Making small laptops with good cooling gets expensive once you need to use vapor chambers or liquid metal to keep up with a bigger laptop. There is also the point that many people including me prefer working on a 15" laptop compared to a 13" regardless which one is more performant. You can also put a 99Wh batterie in a 15" without too many compromises
Tiger lake processors also offer a additional TB4 port form the processor i think, maybe if you use that you can also have a second m.2 slot.
Microsoft’s new base spec Surface laptops studio is looking to do this. granted the “highest” tier only has a 3050Ti baked in, but it is a 14+ in. laptop looking to do the work of the Surface book that came before it (which had “essentially” a swappable dGPU in the keyboard). size does not equate to performance @_Asic is right on this front.
Clevo’s decisions hinge on what makes their customers happy, since clevo provides laptops to some big names that have been in the desktop market for years and are therefore used to the “volatility” of the PC market, maybe they could see this as an extension of that, and approve Clevo’s shift to R2R. Otherwise, Clevo is in a real pickle because they are the middleman and could get pressure from R2R groups from above, and pressure from their customers to stay the course.
Good luck getting Dell, Asus, and Razer to sign on to the “ATX for laptops/R2R” bandwagon… Lenovo, Acer, MSI, and HP are “maybe’s.”
That’s a fun thought. Framework enters something like the eGPU or VR market and disrupts it into something far more economical, and environmental. Hell, let them take on the the handheld console market against Nintendo… wait that might end in ANOTHER Nintendo lawsuit because Nintendo shoots down all competitors.
Question is how far would framework and Clevo work together. The mainboard formfactor of framework is based on using their expansion cards and probably wouldn’t make sense without them. Maybe on the MXM card front both could work together
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I also don’t know if Clevo specializes in aluminum chassis laptops. If I remember correctly Clevo pushes so many designs because they do a lot of plastic cased laptops. “Military-grade” aluminum, while a complete marketing scam, is still going to be more durable than plastic over time, plus rigidity, and aesthetic.
after Iooking at current-gen laptops with MXM graphics in them I still really doubt the engineers at Framework and Clevo could get a fully upgradeable laptop (including MXM) down to the form factor of something like the Macbook Pro 16" or Dell XPS 15 on the thin side or even a lenovo thinkpad from a few years ago on the thick side. They’re all 17" on Clevo’s website and 44mm “deep.” hardly what I would call even an ultrabook-sized machine.
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I personally want to see a 15inch but understand the business side of it and that it will probably be 2 years before that happens…in that case what id like to see is where we can take the components from our 13inch and put it into a frame of a 15inch…I think even the motherboard and battery can be swapped while still having room for a bigger board/battery…that way I can upgrade my MB at a later date instead of in a year or two when they come out with something better.
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It has a intel dekstop cpu inside it with socket and everything and support for 165W nvidia 3080 mobile GPUs aswell as 4 ram slots. Not to mention 2x280W power supplies. This is the furtherst you can get from the thin and light conzept. A lot of clevo laptop rather prioritise performace over trying to get as thin as possible. Question is if its possible to bring MXM cards into 18-25mm with 45W cpu and ~120W GPU for both framework and Clevo. Both might just work together as far as bringing upgradable GPUs into laptops. With enough laptops there would also be an aftermarket where consumers would sell older MXM cards in order to upgrade to newer ones.
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Correct. But I want a chassis that can accommodate multiple drives. Like I said, I don’t care if the drive bay support SATA or m.2. I just want multiple drives.
You can get away with a big fan or the dual fan like the GPD. It’s just that the very majority of people (those that have no idea what a framework laptop is) want thin chassis and the companies see that. Those people have no idea how cooling work and are perfectly happy with a i9 limited to 12W tdp.
Exactly. The problem is that we don’t have a 45W SoC with a graphics capability matching that of the CPU performance it have – we used to, back in 2016 with a 940MX and a i5-6250U. But now we don’t.
We can have desktop class processors running 90W and it is going to have no more graphics performance than a mobile 940MX. If it behave like … say a Radeon RX 560 (which is middle in the ground), I won’t say a thing.
And I doubt they are really going to craft together a large chip specifically for that market. But I also have no idea what Intel is going to do with their Xe graphics, so I’m going to sit tight on that.
Yes it doesn’t. But it should, right?
Well, aside from ultra budget laptops like a HP15-dw1083wm which runs a 15W pentium in a 15 inch chassis that I am happening to be running a “backup” with.
That might be the magic behind how Dell’s two-port TB hub work for their mobile workstations. But we will want to avoid those workarounds as much as possible.
It’s funny to think that the GPU and CPU are drawing more power than our charging bricks can handle.
If you are going beyond 100W, you had done something wrong here. Do that on a desktop.
Right now, I’m worrying that by the time I really need a upgrade the company would not exist anymore. But from the initial response (including Linus) it look like it will be quite some time before it start to go down.
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So funny story… that “magic dock” is what I’m using right now. at my workplace. yes its 210W over two USB-C connectors. as I’m typing this I only have one plugged in and it’s slow charging but otherwise its a full TB dock. I think the other port is literally just doing 100W PD. If I swap the connectors/ports again one takes on TB duty+charging, and the other takes on just PD
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A clever implementation is to have one port doing upstream data and another doing downstream data. This way you have fast transfer rates too.
If only one port is available, then the primary one (on the dock) take on both the upstream/downstream.
Power is like, perhaps split between. 5A at 20V on each port. because there are only this many power pins on the USB-C. You can’t put 20V onto signal rails.
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I always dream of a 15" laptop with full sized num pad and a big battery, keyboard backlight, AMD-CPU for nice performance, but low power consumption, ultra wide IR Camara for Windows Hello and a 500 nit Display. And of course with 2 usb-c thunderbolt ports and 1 usb-a.
The Sad thing is that this is possible, but none of the Laptop companies create a super high end Laptop like this.
If there would be a 15 inch Framework Laptop I maybe can fulfill my dream
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