Is there a plan to include GPU expansion bay in the MOBO case? I’ll be honest, I am tired of looking at just two options, either a SFF PC that cannot be upgraded with low TDP parts or PC with parts that have such a consuption of power that it makes your knees weak. A Framework laptop 16 base (AMD + AMD) in this form factor with lower powered “laptop grade” parts and still getting those great results and possibility to upgrade, that sounds great to me and seems like another gape in the market that Framework could fill in. What do you think?
Welcome to the forum.
From what you said I’m not sure if you’re aware, just to be clear, the current Cooler Master Case will not fit the Framework-16 mainboard. I think they’ll likely create a case for it, but it could be awhile. And since the cooling fans are housed in the expansion bay, so you’d either have to include support for it, or you’d have to build fans into the case. So it seems likely they’d include support for it.
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I am aware of it, thus I wanted to check if there are plans for interations of the case that would include the GPU expansion bay. From what you are telling this is great news and I would certainly love to buy into the setup like that.
If someone releases a case for the Framework 16 mainboard, I think we can assume that it will include an expansion bay and probably also a way to mount input modules (so you could build something like the Pi 400 on steroids).
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The problem here is “if” and I would love to see a definite statement that this “is going to happen”. I’d love to see a low powered PC where you can get R9 and RX 7700s and decent performance that does not take more than 200W. Right now it is hard to come by a GPU that does not take this alone, in the pursuit of power the companies forgot about efficiency which is frustrating. We have 4090 is PC that is total overkill for every aspect that it is, but there is 4090 mobile which I’d rather build my PC with, yet there is no such thing, only prebuild SFF PCs that become a waste after couple of years due to lack of upgradebility, which would be solved by this little trick.
Framework doesn’t confirm upcoming products until they are ready to make an official announcement. And they don’t normally make those announcements until they are far enough into development.
So, yeah. They are not going to suddenly decide to confirm an upcoming product in response to a forum question. “It’s very likely. Based on Framework’s history” is the best you are going to get.
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It doesn’t make sense for them to make a framework 16 main board case yet as no one will be upgrading for a while.
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True but it seems like this is another niche market that Framework can explore.
Just hopping in on this older thread to show my support for this as well. I would love to be able to take my 7840U board and enclose it + add an eGPU using my own or the Framework one in the future. I have high hopes for the cool things we’ll see coming out of this ecosystem!