Hello,
I’ve received my framework 12 about a month ago (batch 11), and I’m facing some major issues with it so far. I’m curious to see if other people have been facing similar issues.
I’ve ordered the laptop without RAM/SSD and without OS.
The parts I’ve installed are KingSpec 256Go M.2 2230 SSD and Patriot Signature DDR5 RAM 16 Go. The laptop has the i3 motherboard. I’ve originally installed Windows 11 (Family Edition).
Ever since we had it, the laptop has been crashing frequently (one to multiple an hour), in various ways:
- Turns suddenly black with an audio glitch (if audio was playing). The screen is still backlit and it looks like the CPU is doing something as the fan keeps spinning for a while, but nothing can be recovered unless you force it to turn off.
- Sometimes the screen freezes and the last frame is still visible, but it’s also completely unrecoverable.
I’ve checked the RAM, SSD seating, as well as the expansion cards (2 USB A / 1 USB-C / 1 HDMI). They looked fine (also note that the laptop is usually just sitting on a flat surface when it happens, no one it touching it, so I doubt mechanical contact is involved).
The OS kernel logs do not help, they don’t seem to show anything related to these crashes, which seem to indicate that it’s a very low-level crash that’s below the kernel (i.e., hardware, I guess).
I first suspected something with thermals, as the problem tends to occur more frequently after getting the first crash of the day. After monitoring the temperatures for a while with CoreTemp on Windows, and Vitals on PopOS (using live USB), and also physically checking the components after occurences of these crashes, it does not seem to be the problem: there are definitely instances for which the parts were barely warm (Sometimes it happens 5 minutes atfer booting… while it’s been off for hours before). I’ve also never seen temperatures being anywhere near critical level (all of them - SSD and RAM included), and while the laptop tends to run a bit hot, I’d say it looks quite normal considering the tiny package.
I then suspected something wrong with the OS itself (I did use some debloating scripts to get rid of ads/telemetry). I’ve tried reinstalling Windows and run the vanilla OS for a while. This turned out to be hard task as the laptop crashes most of the time before the installation has time to complete, and I have to start all over again.
That seems to indicate that the problem might have gotten worse (even though it was pretty much there from the very beginning), as the very first install of Windows I did when receiving the laptop actually went through. But as for now it’s almost impossible to get an OS to install (it also crashed halfway through when trying to install PopOS). I guess with enough attempts I might get one that completes but that’s not really the point.
Next suspicion was towards the parts I’ve got. They are quite cheap parts after all (this laptop is for my partner and mainly used for light tasks such as browsing or text editing, nothing crazy).
For the SSD, I’ve simply ruled out of the equation by running the laptop from live USB for a while. It crashed after about 40 minutes of use while running a USB live version of Pop OS. So clearly not the SSD.
I was then left with the RAM, as the symptoms could definitely correspond to memory failure. While running on Linux, I did a few stress-ng/ memtester rounds, and ended up flashing memtest86 and a USB and running a full RAM tests. Everything was green, even though I’ve run multiple passes. That tests itself was inducing far more stress on the RAM than anything we would do normally on the laptop (highest load is pretty much watching youtube videos), yet it was all fine. Note that the laptop did not crash once despite the test taking 1+ hour. It could be pure luck though.
So at that point I’m rather confused. Unless there’s some mysterious problem on the RAM that would escape all the RAM tests yet occur multiple times per hour when running actual OS, my best guess is that there’s something wrong with the motherboard itself.
At that point this has already been quite time consuming and the laptop is almost unusable as I now even struggle to install an operating system…