As I have been using my framework laptop for many years, I have been able to take my original 11th Gen Intel mainboard and upgrade it to the AMD 7840U. As the upgrade was successful, I noticed the AMD mainboard does not have any RTC battery. I noticed the newer mainboard does not have any RTC as these boards relay on the laptop battery. Everything has been working well but as it has been a few years, I was thinking of doing a future upgrade.
When the laptop battery needs to be replaced, how will the mainboard save the EC power state. When I look at the guides, this portion of the topic is not covered. There are many threads where individuals have partial or full solutions to the mainboard reset. Is there any clear guide to reset any of the mainboard that do not have any RTC module within it? Are these newer boards not meant to be swapped like the initial Intel 11th or 12th gen mainboard?
Does the mainboard need to be set to stand alone to do this repair swap?
I just don’t want my AMD 7840U to become a brick whirling to upgrade the laptop battery.
The AMD 7xxxU board doesn’t come with an RTC battery but you can still plug one if needed. For example, you need one on standalone mode. You can buy one on Framework website at https://frame.work/ca/en/products/16-rtc-battery-cable.
I don’t think there is anything to worry about.
If you replace the laptop battery, the BIOS settings / secure boot, date/time might be forgotten. So all you would need to do is go back into the BIOS and make any changes you need.
So, if you have windows, make sure you have all the bitlocker password/pin recovery procedure working, because the security bits might be forgotten, causing the bitlocker to go into recovery mode.
Yes, it works with the FW13 AMD boards. However, I don’t know if it fits well in the laptop case if you want to keep it all the time. You might need double sided tape to prevent it from freely moving in the case. It’s fine in standalone mode or if you need to replace the main battery without losing your BIOS settings.
You can use this guide to replace the battery in the FW13
You can replace any parts of the FW laptops without problems. Just follow the FW provided guides.
On the more modern AMD mainboards, you don’t need to worry about RTC/CMOS coin batteries because they are only needed if you are running the mainboard standalone. If you have it in a laptop, it will have the large battery instead.
Don’t worry about the EC (Embedded Controller) power state. It is not a problem.
During the process, you might loose some BIOS settings, but all you need to do is set them again and everything is ok.
Note: When replacing the large battery, be very careful, because the pins can be bent or damaged very easily.