I replaced my old laptop with a Framework 12 (i5-1334U, Windows 11), but I can’t use my external graphics card anymore (Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070). The graphics card is in an eGPU box (Razer Core X), compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4.
Where can I find an official confirmation that this eGPU configuration will never work with a Framework 12 laptop?
Currently, Thunderbolt is not supported for these boards, but might be in future upgrades, if that happens. Here’s hoping!
The Framework 12 does not have Thunderbolt as part of the power, price point, and thermal concerns of the board necessitated.
On the Framework 12 spec sheet this section points out that Thunderbolt is not available on it:
Maybe in a future mainboard upgrade we might get it, but it doesn’t seem likely given the initial constraints.
I looked into this before placing my pre-order, the specs on the Framework 12 page say it only does USB3.2, which doesn’t support eGPUs.
Based on the Framework KB article about Thunderbolt, it seems there are some issues trying to get the 11th gen CPUs certified “officially”
For 11th Gen systems, we also have a firmware update in progress to bring in the security updates and power consumption improvements, but not retroactively certify Thunderbolt (there are some test cases we don’t believe we can resolve on that generation, unfortunately).
Source:
… though if you poke around the forums it seems like some people have been toying with getting Thunderbolt to work on the 11th gen CPUs
Unfortunately, with the FW 12 it isn’t about certification. The hardware isn’t there to support Thunderbolt speeds/functionality.
Thankfully, it’s just the retimers apparently, so a future, slightly more expensive board could include it with the certification, I think.
Yeah, that’s what I kind of half-assumed, the whole thunderbolt 3 vs 4 and USB 3.x thing is a confusing mess 
The soc in the 12 could do tb4/usb4, the really expensive part is already there, they just omitted the usb4 capable redrivers for cost reasons. Kind of a shame in my opinion but I assume they did the market research and and determined the price being a couple bucks lower is better than having usb4.
makes sense.. did some digging and found where they made this as a “official” statement
would be great to see them update the KB article about Thunderbolt that still (confusingly) says: “Framework Laptops with 12th Gen Intel Core processors or later (including the Chromebook Edition) are now Thunderbolt 4 certified”
Unfortunately we never found out how much cost that actually saved. I wasn’t asking to give every port usb4 but even having one would be a huge uplift over none.
That was probably written before the 12 was a thing but yeah should probably be updated.
yes! even on the AMD Framework 16, only 2 of the ports do USB4, I’d be more than happy for just one thunderbolt capable port on the Framework 12. I saw people on reddit saying they thought it was left off because the FW12 is intended for “students” but… dude, i played games when i was a student, i would have loved to have had an eGPU dock waiting when i got home from school to hook my laptop up to and do gaming.
That’s not the only use for pcie tunneling but ultimately that ship has sailed.
Apart from egpus a lot of the other uses of thunderbolt are starting to get plain usb alternatives. usb3+dp docks tend to work reasonably well, usb only 10gbit nics are just starting do become available but still just being able to hotplug random pcie devices into a laptop is just neat.
The missing usb4 on the 12 isn’t my only dealbreaker for the 12 (apart from not needing another laptop) but it is certainly one of the bigger ones.
@jayasafunctionofe Nowadays, computer science students are telling their parents that they absolutely need an eGPU for “AI training” and “machine learning,” with gaming being a very minor side benefit. (
it’s a lie)
The cake is a lie!
