2nd Gen components and 7040 Series laptops

Framework Laptop 16
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I just wanted to check that I have understood the situation correctly with respect to the 2nd Gen components introduced with the Gen 2 Laptop 16 and their compatibility with the Gen 1 (7040 Series) mainboards.

As I understand it, most (all?) of the Gen 2 components are compatible with the AMD 7040 Series mainboards, i.e.

  • 2nd Gen Top Cover is compatible with 7040 Series Mainboard
  • 2nd Gen Keyboards are compatible with 7040 Series Mainboard

However, if you buy a complete 7040 Series laptop (DIY Edition or Prebuilt), there’s no choice offered in terms of the chassis, and you can only choose from 1st Gen Keyboards. I assume the only ways you can get a 7040 Series laptop with upgraded components are either

  1. Buy a complete laptop and then ‘upgrade’ it with individual parts (which would be very costly and leave you with several unneeded spares)
  2. Buy all the spare parts individually and assemble the laptop from scratch (It’s great that this is possible, but it’s a lot more work, and you don’t have the benefit of a professional testing the assembled laptop before shipping. Also, RAM is out of stock: presumably they prefer to use their RAM stocks for complete laptop orders)

My dilemma is that on the one hand I don’t want to buy a brand new laptop with a top cover that could be better (because who wants a chassis that flexes more than necessary?), and I don’t really want a windows logo on my linux laptop keyboard either, but on the other hand, I’m not sure why I would want to pay extra for an AI Series processor, since I have no use for the NPU and the 7040 processors should be more than enough for my requirements.

(I do understand that there are economic/logistic considerations: I assume that even the DIY Edition laptops are stocked as a pre-assembled chassis + mainboard, and configuration to the user specification consists of adding the required RAM and peripherals, testing it, then packaging all the bits for shipping. Building the same laptop to order from individual parts would be orders of magnitude more work, and the alternative would presumably involve stocking a larger number of pre-assembled variants)

Have I correctly understood the situation in terms of compatibility and availability?

1 Like
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I don’t know what parts ship with it when you order a new 7040 series laptop, but yes all the gen 2 parts are compatible.

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I’d imagine that they would stop using the first gen parts when they release the 2nd gen parts even for older board models. The only thing different for the 2nd gen keyboard is firmware and a keycap design change. The firmware on the 1st gen keyboards can easily be updated too. As for the 2nd gen top cover I don’t know. I have the first gen top cover and never felt like it needed to be more ridged.

My best bet is that they use the 2nd gen parts because it’s easier to manufacture one type of part and use it for everything. The old stock would probably be used up by now too. I’d say just buy the DIY edition since all you need to do is install RAM, storage, keyboard, and display bezel if I remember correctly.

Now another thing is that the 7040 Series mainboards had thermal issues which required DIY fixes. I’m not sure how they are now since I have an early version of the 7840HS that didn’t come with the PTM7958 and I had to do the mod. You can find the mod here in my forum post where the community and I discovered the cooling issue with the 7040 Series boards.

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More specifically, the keycaps are not physically different - there’s just a minor change to one key’s logo.

From the product listing:
“The 2nd Gen Keyboard retains the same hardware as the 1st Gen but introduces refreshed artwork and updated firmware, which includes a fix to prevent the system from waking while carried in a bag. If you already have a 1st Gen Keyboard, it will be possible to update firmware in the future to access the same functionality.”

From the blog post:
“…most keyboard options have no Windows logo, for all of the Linux users out there. We also have one keyboard option with a Copilot logo in case that’s something you want.”