I very recently bought an Frameworks 16 (Windows) with AMD 7040 series CPU and a dedicated AMD Radeon™ RX 7700S GPU. It’s been working pretty well and I’ve been very happy with it so far; however, I’ve noticed that on two separate occasions, the fans have failed engage when the laptop is put under load. This has caused the CPU to overheat and throttle, leading me shutting down the laptop immediately which fixes the problem. It doesn’t seem to happen all the time (So far only when I after have been moving the laptop about and not always), and always comes with the other symptom of the laptop failing to switch between iGPU and dGPUs.
While its not a big issue right now aside from scaring me, I’m worried if this continues, especially if it becomes more frequent, it could damage the CPU over time and cause the laptop to degrade faster.
Is there anything I can do to fix this? (Fan settings I could fiddle with to make it engage sooner etc)
Fortunately newer machine are much better at the thermal protection from overheating; especially laptops that are known to be closed environments and subject to substantially more heat than regular computers. It is good to be aware of this though.
If not done so already go ahead and make a ticket with support so they are aware of the issue. They have the most updated troubleshooting information (we are all end users on the forums). If the it is the same issue as @Charlie_6; a hypothesis is the sensor may be intermittently working on the board OR maybe there is a poor contact with the interposer on the mainboard. Carefully removing, inspecting the interposer and the contact points, and reinstalling the connector may improve the situation. This is just a thought based on similar users others have expressed over time.
If it is in fact something defective on the graphics module; nothing other than replacing the component will fix it.
Alternatively, another thought that just occurred as I am typing this came to mind (though maybe unlikely); check, disconnect, and reconnect the fan connectors while the device is apart.
Someone not long ago had an issue with one of their fans and reseating it a few times fixed the issue. (Though it is harder to believe that in this instance that both fan connectors are experiencing the same issue). Just some thoughts to think about or try to help the issue.
Thank you for the detailed response! I’ll make a support ticket about this since it has happened another time after this post. I am not too worried about the throttling, but I want to keep this laptop in good health for as long as possible :).
I think I might have discovered the issue. I decided to download HWinfo to check on the sensors as I stress test my laptop, and they still show 50-70C even as my laptop becomes slow and actively throttles. This seems to line up with your hypothesis that the sensor may be intermittently working properly, it is strange that a simple restart would fix it though. I’ll add this to my ticket to see if they have an explaination.