What is the expected cost of the full chassis upgrade for the framework 13. The chassis for the 13 right now is about $430, and the cost of the input cover and bottom cover kit is already $330 on its own without a battery or display. I was also wondering what the bottom cover upgrade kit would be when including the battery. I have not seen any talks about this here or anywhere else, so I am just posting this to see if anyone knows.
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The store listings look somehwat unfinished to the price may become clearer over time. A lot of the bundles don’t say what they actually include.
I doubt it’s going to be all that cheap though.
I’ll probably just upgrade the input cover at first to get the touchpad and maybe somewhat better keyboard.
If there are reports that the antennas in the new lids are much better I may do that too. New battery and bottom cover will likely have to wait till my 61wh decides to go spicy.
The display is kind of tempting but I am not sure I am willing to pay almost 300 bucks for an lcd so I’ll probably skip that for now.
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Wait until notebookcheck.net’s review and in the review you can see the specific display model
It’s sad to see “spicy” becomes normalized
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As I come from sweden prices will be sek with VAT included, but you can follow my method
The core ultra series three starts at 15k sek, and the lowest end series 3 mother board is 5k sek. that sugest a price of about 10k sek, remove VAT and convert to USD it should land at around $700 - $800
It is part of the lifecycle of a battery. previously with the cylindrical cells you had the same degradation it just showed slightly differently. Hell even further back you had leaking nimh/ca cells XD.
In fairness my 61wh is from a very early batch and while it doesn’t have that many cycles it has been charged to 100% a lot and jet it is still perfectly flat. It may not even get spicy but I don’t plan on replacing it before it does.
Also to see if they fixed the slow pixel response times. No point having smeary 120hz XD.
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It seems the chassis upgrade options listed are also fairly limited. It’s not entirely clear to me if the bottom cover is compatible with the old input cover or if you need to replace both and thus also have to upgrade the touchpad?
I’d ideally like to upgrade just the bottom for the larger battery + new speakers and keep current input cover. If new input cover is required as well then I’d like the full bottom kit sans keyboard.
The new input cover is required for the new battery, due to height constraints.
See Compatilibity List
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i can’t wait to get the full new chassis for my 7840U framework 13.
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My question is, even though on the filters for the FW 13 7040U series the full chassis kit (chassis, battery, screen, speakers, etc.) is shown as compatible, the battery by itself is not. Does that mean that the battery is not compatible only due to the different geometry of the new chassis, or is the connector in some way different?
the connector should be the same as they said it was backwards compatible through all generations of fw13 and there are the same connectors on every one. The new battery by itself isnt compatible bc of the geometry of the bottom cover.
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If you add up the prices, you start to get close to $1000 (US).
- Bottom cover: $169
- Speakers: $19
- Battery: $89
- Display: $299
- Input cover: $179
- Top cover: unknown, but the non-Pro is $89
- Hinges: unknown, non-Pro is $24
- Webcam module (2nd Gen): $39
- Audio board: $14
Adds up to roughly $850 $930. So I’d guess a bundle for $799 $850-900.
Edit: added some included components I missed.
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the bottom cover includes speakers and the top cover is the same as the regular one just a different color. There is also the hinge which is not included in either the top or bottom cover and that will be $24 and the . I agree that it will most likely be around $800 for the bundle which is unfortunate, as I hoped we would be able to get it for closer to the previous one around $450-650.
Pretty sure that is not the case, at the very least it comes with upgraded antennas (which is kind of a big deal if they are actually better) but in frameworks upgrade video it looked quite different internally.
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The $169 bottom cover kit which is the only one that has a complete price does not include speakers. There’s a different “pro bottom cover upgrade kit” which has no price listed yet which includes the bottom, the input cover, the speakers, and the battery.
So the separate price for the speakers appears to be needed alongside the $168 bottom cover kit.
The top cover definitely has changed per the Framework YouTube video. Full CNC as opposed to stamped aluminum plus plastic. Guessing the Pro version will likely be over $100, maybe closer to $150, as CNCing from aluminum is just a more expensive process.
You’re right I missed the hinges but they also don’t appear to have those as a standalone kit. I also missed the 2nd Gen camera being included with the full chassis kit, we might be looking at closer to $900.
That was a comparison to the first Framework 13, an 11th gen intel, using the first / gen1 top cover. The gen1 13 top cover was stamped aluminum plus plastic.
The current 13 top cover is CNC. Though in the youtube video Nirav Patel says the 13 Pro CNC top cover geometry is “slightly re-optimized”
@ 14 min, 13 sec, youtube.com/watch?v=JSxgCEpkiKM
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Any ideas what to do with the old chassis (Display, keyboard, battery)? Would be nice to make a kind of nexdock device out of it. But not sure what is needed for that. Alternatively the Risc-V mainboard is the cheapest solution to make a full computer out of it.
I’m also reluctant to do an upgrade to the pro chassis for this reason (even if the black aluminum + gray/graphite keyboard and the 74Wh battery look absolutely fantastic 
).
I fundamentally don’t need to change my FW13 11th Gen as it’s working perfectly (though my battery’s SoH starts to be lower than 80%). I guess there’s still the option to sell it…
I don’t know the price, but I hope they add the Blank ANSI - Graphite option to the Framework Laptop 13 Pro Chassis Kit - Graphite.
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Black slab
I wonder If it will be optioned to just upgrade to the chassis itself as the only pro upgrade I only want a sturdier frame and that larger battery.