eGPU with OCuLink on latest FW13?

Framework Laptop 13
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Hey there,
I know similar questions have been posted before, but most of threads are over a year old and I couldn’t really to find any recent post on the topic - If this has already been answered, please point me in the right direction.

So now for my question - I’m interested in adding a eGPU to my FW13, I got the “AMD Ryzen™ AI 300 Series - Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 370” system. My main goal with adding an eGPU is to be able to play with AI-model training on my local setup, and to some extent also to be able to play some more demanding games.

In my search I saw many mentioned OCuLink as the prefered way to connect an eGPU, since it allows full PCIe bandwidth. As far as I understand OCuLink connects through the M.2 socket on the mainboard - but from the product page of the motherboard, it’s not clear if there is a second M.2 socket or not for my mainboard: https://frame.work/se/en/products/mainboard-amd-ai300?v=FRANTE0009

Does this mainboard support OCuLink, do anyone have any experience connecting an eGPU it and does the latest series offer any news on this topic not documented in the older guides?

Very grateful for any help, pointers or insight into this. I also remember reading somewhere that one of the four expansion ports might have PCIe support, but I’m unsure where I saw that, or if its accurate.

Many thanks

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Hello

You can potentially use the wifi slot for it, I have not tried it though, because I own a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU with AMD Radeon 9070 XT.

It works great for AI (LM studio), I was also able to run an LLM with Ollama on it under Windows 11 (did not work in Fedora, hence LM studio).

As per gaming: Cyberpunk 2077 - 180 fps average with framegen and FSR 3.1 on maxed out settings 1440p resolution, 90fps if ray tracing enabled (fedora with all-ways-egpu, including optimizations for AMD cards)

Edit: fw13 ryzen AI 9 board

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Pcie4x1 is a massive bottleneck, at that point usb4 is much faster.

1 Like
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I have a FW 13 7840U and running Fedora 43, with the latest kernel, I can’t get the 9070 XT working either. I have a Razer Core X V2 TB5 enclosure and it works really well with my older 5700 XT. But I can’t get the 9070 XT working at all under Linux.