I am in batch 14 and am excited to receive news on shipping! Having said that, I am curious to knowing if there are any small inconveniences with the product. Whether if it’s noise, underwhelming performance etc (for both windows and Linux).
i dont like the fact that the desktop chassis isnt 4 or 5 mm taller to accommodate single slot add in cards for the pcie x4 slot. and that the slot isnt open-ended. i dont like how the limit for the power is 115 w boosted when the ryzen ai max 395+ can boost to 140w…. other than that i love the whole device i just wish it was taller.
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The latter point is merely a matter of your settings. The default is at 115W boost, just change from “Balanced” to “Performance” power settings in your OS power management settings, then it will boost to 140W for 10 min and have 120W sustained instead of the 100W.
That is at least the case in Linux but I would assume it should be no different in Windows.
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The expansion ports being on the bottom of the chassis is a pain point if you’d like to plug in devices that are a bit thicker. Elevating the desktop with feet or a platform helps but Framework should have placed those expansion slots higher.
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Mine was in batch 7. I’m having issues with windows not recognizing my newly installed Cooler Master - Mobius 120p ARGBW fan in Windows. A fix was posted in the Framework community but I didn’t have luck with it. I got the 64 Gig version and holy hell! The machine runs everything I throw at it from my Steam library like they were nothing! Other than that, the box came like the unboxing video’s and the step that took longest was installing windows.
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Oh that’s good news for me! Can you share what games you were playing and at what resolution?
Death Stranding on Default, marvel rivals, Baulders Gate 3.
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i have checked both power profiles and they are both limited to 115w. at least according to HWinfo
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Batch 10. My device was delivered just yesterday as of writing.
I got the noctua fan they recommend on their site.
It nearly doesn’t fit the bracket. Either it or the fan is, like, a mm too wide. Had to use an uncomfortable amount of force to get it into place. But it seems to work. Also the documentation for the fan was sort of unclear, but I think I was able to intuit it correctly.
Outside of that, I’m currently having some audio issues over HDMI. Unclear if that’s a reoccurring issue or user error on my side.
That is interesting. Are others seeing the same under Windows?
It would explain the notebookcheck review where the claimed to have set to performance but yet showed a power draw of 115W Boost and 100W sustained.
Is this some weird Windows limitation because it definitely works in openSUSE Tumbleweed and Fedora?
If Windows power management settings are really useless ryzenadj could still be an option. There is a Windows version of it available. Just be careful with it as the wrong out of specification settings could possibly damage the system.
Balanced power profile in Windows nerfs performance. 10 liked to randomly switch between it and the High Performance setting. And yes the balance is basically eco mode and nerfs a lot things like how high your processor will turbo, and if you USB devices randomly stop working.
One of the reasons I finally build a MS Server over pandemic was to force the high performance power profile on all the computers in my house hold.
I set mine up yesterday. I haven’t successfully booted it using USB. I’m trying Arch Linux, multiple usb sticks. They work on my other Ryzen box so I’m stumped. The desktop BIOS has very few configurable options. If I get past this I’ll report back with other inconveniences.
I learned from this post that the bios setup you get when boot fails is a subset of the setup options. If you hit F2 during boot, you get the main BIOS menu, which includes Secure Boot options.
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I wish it had a disk activity light! Or am I just old now?
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I also sort of slightly missed the noise of the platters on HDDs spinning sometimes too. Then I just go to my NAS and listen to 9 of them spinning and realise I don’t.
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Make sure you have it in the proper orientation. It was certainly difficult to align due to tight tolerances but only gentle force should not be required.
Have you tried the Windows App Store app named PowerPlanSwitcher? I use it on my server (not this workstation as I haven’t gotten delivery yet) and the power plan I select is maintained across boots.
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It turns out that there is a disk activity light, but only sort of. In the Desktop schematics page 14, you can see a 9-pin header on the mainboard that will drive an external HDD activity LED. If you look at the actual connector (located at the top of the mainboard just above the primary SSD), you can see that the power switch and power LED connections have wires, but the HDD LED pins and the RESET switch pins on the connector have no wires in them.
It also looks to me like there should be an HDD activity LED on the mainboard itself (LED4 in the schematic). But I can’t find LED4 on the mainboard anywhere.
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It’s usually best that you have a program manage your power plan and not leave everything on high all the time, because if a system is doing nothing, it really shouldn’t produce extra heat.
If the system is doing nothing, the High power plan does not cause it to heat more than an Eco one. The big difference is when you are in a game or other intense activity, and if your devices charge when the computer is a sleep and wake on mouse wiggle.
The power saving one is to maximize battery life, and on desktop or laptop that is always plugged in there is no reason to go to that power profile. Again a computers componets only heat up when in use, not when doing nothing. Also the thermals on the desktop back this up, and only at full load does it get hotter on the high power profile.
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