According to this review, the inefficiency of the GPU makes the factory 180W power brick insufficient to keep the battery charged during heavy gaming. According to the knowledge base, the 1, 2, 4 and 5 expansion card slots support up to 240W charging.
The question is, is it possible to use 2X180W, 180W+60W or 4X60W power bricks to get 240W power input?
Nope. If multiple power bricks are connected it will only draw from the highest power brick (or if they are equal it will go with the one that’s been connected the longest IIRC). It will not draw from multiple simultaneously.
I’ll just point out that battery draw during heavy GPU use is a known limitation of the current power solution.
also you REALLY have to peg the machine hard and for a long time to be at risk of running out of power.
you also have the option of not running the machine 100% totally full tilt, just to keep from straining the battery, until a higher wattage power source is available. i don’t think you’d actually lose out on a lot of performance, and i’m betting it’d be a hell of a lot quieter fan-wise.
depressingly, this kind of situation appears to be standard with gaming laptops, EVEN for the ones that have a proprietary or otherwise nonstandard power supply. at least we have reason to believe that we’ll eventually be able to fully power the unit.
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I heard in case of 5A limitation, usb-c connector only got ~90% efficiency, is that true? is that mean the power delivered in to computer is much less than 180w?
90% is pretty good. All connectors have losses. And then there are more losses because a GPU does not work with 36V, so it has to be stepped down. And more losses because the 100ish Amperes the GPU actually uses at 1.1 or so Volt create a lot of heat in the traces to the GPU.
the main problem is that at full utilization w/dgpu the machine can use more than 180 watts. that’s why it needed the ability to accept 240w
so until we have a higher wattage usb pd power supply, this is always going to be a thing that can happen if you don’t meter how hard you run the machine
also you REALLY have to peg the machine hard and for a long time to be at risk of running out of power.
Yes, because before non-removable(without opening the laptop and access its chassis) battery pack became mainstream, all laptops were capable of running full performance while charging the battery pack at full(at least half) speed on their factory-supplied power bricks, regardless of gaming laptop or not. When non-removable laptop battery becomes mainstream, laptop manufactures begin to cut cost on the power brick (and the internal PSU) because they assume the average users don’t run the laptop full performance without a battery. Framework is no exception
depressingly, this kind of situation appears to be standard with gaming laptops, EVEN for the ones that have a proprietary or otherwise nonstandard power supply. at least we have reason to believe that we’ll eventually be able to fully power the unit.
To make matters worse, some laptops (not Framework) simply won’t boot without a battery even with a sufficient power supply.