Here is the issue, i have the 180 watt charger that came with my framework 16 and it works great for most applications. However, I found when I am gaming, the laptop drains battery somehow. i have a 100 watt Mac book charger that i have plugged into another port on the laptop, but the laptop only seams to want to take power from one adapter. My question is, will there possibly be support for double power supply in the future through a firmware update or something?
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I don’t have any special insight into what Framework has in mind, but from what I know of hardware, I doubt that it would be feasible to add support for two separate power supplies simultaneously. The systems involved just weren’t designed with that in mind.
It shouldn’t be necessary soon, in any case. I’m sure that several power-supply companies are working on a 240W charger, it’s just a matter of which one finishes its testing and gets it out the door first.
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I asked the same question a while ago, saying if we can get 2X180W or 4X60W or 180W+60W to work and the answer is negative. I hope Framework makes an EC firmware update to support it
If everything is on max performance the 180 watt adapter is not quite enough. Someone mentioned that if they kept it just one level down (balanced?) it stopped draining the battery they just lost a little bit of framerate. Not ideal, though until future firmware and power adapters are available that is one solution.
Having multiple power inputs over USBC is a bit more complicated than it seems. There are some development boards that will put out 240W over USBC but they are engineering samples if I read correctly.
I think having more usb c power supplies feeding the fw16 with power might need extra electronics in the fw16.
I think it is not an elegant solution. An elegant solution is for a 240w single usb c power supply. One cable, and problem solved. Once a 240w psu is available, the work and extra electronics to get 2 usb-c psu to work would be not needed any more.
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240W PSU and docking station, please, so there really is only one cable to connect. Just asking myself why the FW16 has 6 (7 with dGPU) ports, though 
I don’t have the dGPU, so the Dell 240W dock is sufficient for me even with only one cable connected and thus at half power.
I think if this was possible it would be a game changer for gaming laptops. It would potentially allow for up to 480W of charging although via 2 cables rather than one. That would allow for really power laptops but cooling would be the biggest issue with that. I think the most likely scenario would be to offset based on the chargers available. So imagine the max of 240W but split between 2 120W chargers or any combination of lower wattage chargers. Like if you’re on a flight that has 60W USB and you supplement that with a battery.
The only way I could see two chargers being allowed is if they come out with a dGPU that is a real power hog, so one charger is used to supply that and a second one for the rest of the laptop as is done now.
There have been laptops with dual power supplies in the past. FW would best implement this by running the power for a dGPU directly into the dGPU unit. This would make possible running something like the 7900s 180w mobile GPU, which, even with a 240w adapter, is pushing it.
Has it been confirmed that the FW 180w adapter is not enough? I never ran any combined tests, but the hardest I could hit the CPU sustained with 55w (CB R23, P95 Small FFTs) and the GPU was 90W (Port Royal and Speedway loops). Gaming should be less than the hypothetical 145w load, but even if not that leaves ~30w for everything else. Are they downstream USB devices pulling sizable loads?
I’m happy overall with my FW16 and support the concept, but they definitely had to make a lot of compromises. Or choose to… My previous Lenovos did 100w USB C charging and had 300w traditional bricks. Bulkier and heavier chargers to be sure, but obviously no power issues with 300w available.
yes, it has been confirmed. When playing war thunder while i have the 180w charger plugged into my laptop, the battery drains energy. Mind you, this is with the “best performance power mode”. When switching to “Best power efficiency”, the 180w is enough.
I don’t follow FW closely enough to know if they have discussed it, but it seems clear that they have power supply/delivery issues. Multiple reports of the 180w charger not being enough and multiple reports of non-FW chargers having issues running even IGP-only laptops without throttling.
Framework had a choice, go with old tech, which will become obsolete soon, or go USB PD. They are, I believe, the first to release a 240W USB PD laptop. Unfortunately, at this moment, until device makers get higher wattage power supplies out for sale, you can’t use the maximum load sustained indefinitely without starting to drain the battery. You need to put the OS into some level of power saving mode. This is only until we get new higher wattage power supplies.
Framework made this known in their forum / blog post about the Power Adapter on Jun 2023
Which is also posted to the Blog on the Framework website frame.work/blog and goes out to everyone who signs up for their email newsletter I believe.
Greater than 180W power supplies will come.
The issue is that purpose-built chip manufacturers haven’t yet put chips for greater than 180W USB PD power supplies into full production yet. It takes time to create, test, verify for production, and then ramp up production of new purpose-built chips. Then device manufactures need time to design devices, in this case power supplies, around the chips, and get them into full production. To be clear, the 240W USB PD spec is completely finished, it’s not a “draft” or proposal. And the FWL16 will have certainly been verified to support 240W PD using test equipment.
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As @MJ1 had mentioned, Framework was the first manufacturer to release a 240 watt USB-PD device, and additionally I believe that they were the first to release anything USB-PD that was able to provide or use more than 100 watts. Dell doesn’t count with their 120 watt USB-PD chargers as they use a proprietary extension that only works with their machines, and their chargers will only run at 100w or less with other machines.
Also as @MJ1 had mentioned, that’s in the highest performance configuration with a dGPU installed. If you bump it down just a notch, 180W is fine.
Additionally, not everyone is using their laptop exclusively for gaming, running in high performance mode with the dgpu all the time. Some people like myself don’t even have a the dgpu installed most of the time or at all.
Well, it depends on what the wattage of the charger is and what you’re doing with your machine. If you use a 25 watt charger and try charging your framework with it, it will charge, just slowly and while you’re not doing anything, and of course if you’re doing anything significant it will drain the battery.
I personally use mine regularly with 65 watt chargers when I’m on the go and with normal workloads (i.e. non-gaming) the battery just stays at my configured maximum the whole time I’m using the computer.
On top of that, this is a non-framework-specific issue. Take any Dell laptop for instance and try using an adapter with a wattage lower than what it came with; when you turn it on (from completely off, not from sleep), you’ll get a bios message stating that the power adapter provides less power than expected and that you should plug in the adapter that came with the computer. Windows will tell you something similar when booted. If you exceed the power rating, then the laptop will start using battery power just like any Framework laptop.
Instead of thinking of it as a problem, think about it as a feature. With older laptops you’d likely encounter issues like degraded performance, no charging at all, or even worse, burning up/out the power supply due to trying to draw more power than it was designed for. With USB-PD you’re able to use a wide range of power supplies and it just works and deals with the amount of power its able to receive.
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It’s debatable if selling a charger for a laptop that cannot run said laptop at full performance was the correct strategy. Choosing USB C PD for the charger also brings with it a new set of challenges in terms of the various chargers, power banks, and cables that may or may not implement the spec correctly. Regardless of fault, FW is fielding support issues over it as can be seen in the forums.
I can appreciate that the FW 180w charger is relatively small and light, but at the same time the FW16 isn’t small - it’s noticeably larger than comparable/faster laptops and we willingly accept that as a tradeoff for it’s modularity. Assuming the only downside is using the battery to supplement the 180w charger (iow, no downclocking/throttling), then I suppose the only negative is a minor reduction in battery durability.
180W (and even 240w) limits expandability. I’d pay them right now for the 180w 16GB 7900s dGPU for the FW16, but they cannot support it. I’d pay them right now for a 16c/32t CPU, but they cannot support it (at least with a dGPU). Although unlikely to ever matter, FW has limited potential upgrades due to their power delivery choices.
I have other laptops that can use alternative charging that runs them in a degraded mode and have made use of that feature often. FW isn’t unique in that regard.
I see so many people with complaints when they don’t seem to understand the abilities of the FWL16.
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It can.
The expansion bay connector was designed to be able to back feed up to 210W. Specs are on FW’s github. You want a 180W dGPU? It can just be made to accept power from a port in the dGPU & back feed what’s needed for the rest of the system.
But many people fail to consider that for every watt of power you push in, you need as much cooling capacity. Going to need a big and / or loud cooling system to get 390W of heat out of a laptop fast enough that it doesn’t start throttling, or roast itself or you.
There is a point when an eGPU via Oculink becomes a better option, just due to the cooling issues when trying to squeeze things into a reasonable size laptop case.
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I would like to see a 180w 7900s dGPU option. The 7700s is anemic. My understanding is that Nvidia would never agree to be used in a modular setting like the FW16, so they were all but forced to go with AMD, but mobile GPUs really expose AMD’s lack of power efficiency. A nice compromise would have been a 16GB 7700s. An eGPU through USB4 or Occulink can solve GPU performance issues but adds portability issues.
Regarding the expansion bay connector being able to push power to the system, that is something I did not know. Thank you for that. I suspect it will never be used in the manor suggested unless FW does it (taking power inputted through the dGPU module to feed both the system and high-draw dGPU).
I never said the 180w charger was a mistake, only that some might consider it so. I’m personally not affected by the 180w charger, but acknowledge that others might be. My FW16 was bought to support the concept and the company, and otherwise has been sitting in a closet after my initial curiosity was sated. Compromises are made all the time in laptops, particularly with respect to thermals, TDP, and noise. The 240w charger article linked is from June 2023, or roughly 9-10 months before Batch 1 started shipping. I imagine most FW16 are glad FW didn’t decide to wait until the 240w’s release.