Check your USB-C cables if you think a port is broken

Framework Laptop 16
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I ran into an issue this morning; I thought the middle USB-C port on my Framework 16 was broken; I tried plugging in a couple external drives and it wouldn’t recognize anything. I tried plugging the drives into different ports and it worked just fine.

After swapping out different USB-C expansion module trying to see if it was maybe the module that was bad, it still wouldn’t work.

…until I decided just remove the expansion module and plug in something directly. The cable I was using wouldn’t fit all the way in, so I tried grabbing another, slimmer, cable. It still wouldn’t fit, but then it hit me to just try the new cable I grabbed with the expansion module, and it worked!

Note that the cable isn’t necessarily broken, it works on every other port on the machine, just not the middle right-side port. There’s just… something this specific port doesn’t like about the cable I have.

For reference, the “broken” cable is a DockCase USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 cable that I’ve had since 2018, and the cable that worked is a an 8 inch Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 USB-C cable.

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Out of curiosity, is it possible to replace the USB-C ports on the mainboard itself in case one actually breaks?

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I’m sure you could find a replacement usb-c port and replace it, but you’d need to know how to solder.

That said, it’s extremely unlikely that the port physically breaks if you’re using expansion cards; the expansion cards themselves provide support so it can only slide in and out, limiting side-to-side and up-and-down movement. You’d have to be trying to break it to possibly do any damage, for instance I could imagine if you shoved a screwdriver between the case and the expansion card and pried it out, you might damage the internal port, but even then you might just end up with a broken usb-c connector stuck in the port.

That said, if it’s broken electrically, that will be more difficult – you’d need to be able to diagnose what’s wrong and replace the correct parts on the board.

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