@Dan_Lane MXM is dead, in that getting GPUs in that form factor is rather difficult both for consumers and manufacturers, meaning that little upgradability is actually gained by using an MXM slot on a laptop.
Seems it’s no longer an open standard though, and wikipedia doesn’t show anything on it since jan 2019. What a shame 
+1 for 15" screen size. I just can’t work all day on 13". If 15" was available I would order it the same day.
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I would love a 15" 3:2 form factor however, I think that Framework would like to try for a couple of years to prove the viability of the system first prior to overextending right of the bat. IMHO.
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This gets my up vote too. I only use 17 inch notebooks, so 13 is not something I can work with, otherwise I would have ordered already. 15 would be a compromise I might go for, 16 even better, if 17 is not on the horizon.
As for the keyboard - thanks community for this insight - I finally see how many people need a numpad! I am astounded but glad to know. As a developer I was always confused because I basically do not use it at all, but instead would pay double the price for a notebook that has no numpad but instead the cursor keys and the block insert/pageup/down etc completely intact as on a full scale keyboard. As a developer it makes my life pretty miserable, working on a notebook where these pivotal keys for my work got squished into some corner carelessly. Maybe a framework notebook can be modular enough to offer such a keyboard? Not sure such a thing even exists, despite the tens of millions of developers out there.
Also I agree that matte display is very high on my list as well as 2:3 display too (more screen space is simply better). I have an LG gram with only intel GPU, doing fine. For gaming can connect an external Thunderbolt GPU - enough for me.
Anyway, rooting for a good launch of the 13 inch, as soon as something larger comes out, I am so in. Amazing work!
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Linus from LTT has a great video that explains why it might be a long time before we get another version of the framework laptop.
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Though Linus didn’t actually say it has to take long, it really just depends how much they got from the investors for the shares they are willing to part with.
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I much prefer 14" but 15" would still be a nice option
The only reason I’m holding back is that I need the screen real estate, 16" monitor in a 15" chassis with 19:10 aspect ratio (or 3:2, but haven’t tried one of those in a while so not sure). I do software development and I’m more comfortable with that screen size.
A big plus if it had a bigger battery, no dedicated GPU mainboard option, and 6+ expansion slots.
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As if we need another +1, here it is from me. I’ll order the day they have something larger than the current. I don’t even care which keyboard it has.
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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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