Framework 16 - Ryzen AI HX370 Upgrade - Appreciation Post

[Yere]

Which Linux distro are you using? CachyOS KDE
Which release version? Rolling release. SKIP!
If rolling release, last date updated? Today 2025-12-23.
Which kernel are you using? 6.18.2-3
Which BIOS version are you using? The latest. Something-4.02
Which Framework Laptop 16 model are you using?

My Framework 16 v1:
Manjaro KDE
AMD Ryzen 7840HS
32GB Framework RAM kit
2TB NVMe Solidigm P41 Plus

My Framework 16 v2:
CachyOS KDE
AMD Ryzen AI HX 370
96GB Framework RAM kit
2TB NVMe Solidigm P41 Plus

Hello,

I received my mainboard (batch 2) last week and finally got around to installing it and; I’m so neurotic and filled with joy and excitement; I have to share my experience.

The board came in a very large shipping box. You could probably easily fit 30 of those in there so I was pretty confident that there would be no shipping related damages.

The swap, with the mainboard guide, was easier than when I used to replace parts on my Samsung Note 2.

Finally, I put the new Framework 96GB memory kit in that baby, closed it up, grabbed a cold one, let out a sigh of mixed emotions, and pressed the power button.

Memory training was a breeze. It only took a few seconds. I then wiped the old install and decided to experience the BTRFS file system and CachyOS for the first time. New year, new me

And now the real fun stuff. How is it?

The OS experience is nothing like I’ve ever experienced before. The speed… the SPEED!!!

I’ve never seen UI animations that actually update so fast it feels like sci-fi. Especially for Linux. Granted there were still some visual oddities/glitches, but that could be because of the fresh minimal install with no extra setup. I guess I’ll need to experience a 360-500hz display panel before I ever get this feeling again, but I’ve still disabled animations as I can’t stand ‘em anyway

The smoothness of the mouse, windows, even in games (STS, Balatro, etc), feels like I also changed the display panel. It got barely warm during play and it’s so buttery smooth, I’m really getting the full 165hz / low-latency experience now. It’s giving my 5900X/6800XT/4K 144Hz desktop a run for its money. On v1 of my FW16 it also felt smoother, but only slightly.

Package installs feels like it’s sucking more energy than an AI data center with how fast things fly in the terminal. I barely lift my finger off the Enter button and it’s done.

I can reserve up to 48GB of memory in the BIOS for the iGPU

Overall, it doesn’t compare to anything else for me and my needs, and I no longer feel disappointment for not getting a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 option.

But surely not everything is as “perfect” as I say right? Right.

Boot/reboot times are atrocious. The blame is 3 way. Framework’s BIOS, I now use disk encryption on a low power/no cache NVMe (Solidigm P41 Plus), and CachyOS. I will eventually upgrade to a high performance 4TB NVMe drive and both Framework & CachyOS will continue to optimize things little by little, so no real complaints here.

The Kernel (and BIOS?) usb bug is still here. I’m still seeing the ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: unknown error 256.

It also royally crapped itself at some point last night while I was sleeping. Woke up to a barely responsive OS. Rebooted and everything from the BIOS to the OS was insanely sluggish. It also stopped charging like the v1 did once. Heck, even the BIOS menu lagged when navigating the menu. The fix was the magical “Disconnect Battery option in the BIOS + shutdown and hold the power button for 30 before connecting the original charger” trick. Everything is back to normal since.

Some final words.

I recommend the upgrade 100%. I’ll update here if anything pertinent comes up over the following weeks. I feel the same “I’ve never been happier with a laptop“ with the v2 as I did with the v1. I’m a very happy customer and glad I believed in the FW16’s mission even if it was pure torture to wait for a motherboard upgrade since day 1 as I had planned to use the first mainboard for my next home server upgrade months before the first FW16 was ever shipped.

Best of luck to everyone still waiting for their board. It feels like mine shipped a month later than expected. It threw a wrench in my schedule as I had planned a lot of things after the first confirmation e-mail. But with how good of an upgrade this is, it was worth the wait and emotional damage

And finally, a reminder to Framework. Where… is… my… RGB NUMPAD???

[August_Bigelow]

Having the exact same Kernel USB error and it’s incredibly frustrating. I wasn’t getting it on the previous mainboard. But now this one causes my Thunderbolt dock to crap out, making this highly unstable to use at my desk.

[Yere]

Yeah, the problems are intermittent for me.

Had no such error at first too, and at some point charging started to misbehave.

It once took a good 15-20 minutes before it started charging after the battery had depleted overnight. It was never really a problem until it completely stopped charging one day. Usually a replug or reboot fixed it, but that time battery was starting to get low with all my troubleshooting and I needed a fix and FAST.

Later I ordered 2 new USB-C ports in case it was hardware related, but I still get the error.

Last time it was a bother was a couple days ago during the migration to v2. I couldn’t backup my system to my external SSD. It would transfer 2-3GB then crap it self to 0.000001 Kb/s or wtv and trying to format the drive was weird and slow. Some operations took minutes….

I tried the drive on my Windows desktop, it formatted to NTFS in a second, and got 600-700 mb/s sustained for large files and transfered 20GB in a few seconds… So it wasn’t the drive going bad. And it worked perfectly fine on the Framework before…

I updated the SSD firmware and changed the Kernel from 6.17.x to 6.18.x and was able to transfer at full speed. So It works now… but for how long?!

I hope this will be resolved at some point, as I’m planning to give up entirely on desktops once the OCulink Expansion Bay Shell comes out…

Edit: I’ve experienced similar, and at times, the very same issues on the Flow X13 (Arch btw) and my S22 Ultra of all things… So I never really blamed the FW16 for it. I figured it was a Linux problem. So I just kick the can further down the road waiting for a fix to magically show up one day…

[Clinery]

There was an AMD GPU firmware bug in the linux-firmware 11/25/25 release that was reverted on 12/3. The bug causes the system to majorly stutter, at least for me. This is probably what you encountered when the laptop “royally crapped itself.”
The fix is to simply make sure your firmware is “updated” to the correct firmware. Looking at CachyOS’ packages, it seems the new firmware version is 20251125-2 as Arch has it listed as updated 12/5.
Gentoo lists it as version 20251125_p20251203.
Hope this helps anyone else running the buggy firmware version.

[Yere]

Thanks for the heads up!

I doubt I’m affected considering my install date & the impact it had on the BIOS menu, and I’ve been stable so far since Disconnect Battery trick, but it’s worth checking out nonetheless.

Will report back if I figure something out.

[Yere]

Quick update to free myself from the curse that haunts “OPs that never reply“ until their last breath.

TLDR
The last few weeks have had a few ups and downs. Aside from charging issues, overall stability seems to be getting better. No idea how much of it comes from updates, my own fiddling with system customization, etc.

Only issue I haven’t been able to explain yet is speaker audio sounding like an old radio. It feels like its coming out mono and with 0 “bass” / mids. Audio was always bad on the FW16, but it was “tolerable”. Now its unbearable. Maybe I need to reconnect the wire to the mainboard? Hopefully, I’ll figure it out soon.

Charging Issues
Lots of charging issues the first couple weeks.

I had to disconnect the battery again a few days after the original post.

I’ve woken up to a dead battery as the laptop decided to just stop charging at some point while it was in sleep.

Seems to be getting better somehow as time goes on. I really hope I find some answers for this.

Stability
As far as CachyOS is concerned, the previous and RC (Release Candidate) kernels don’t boot at all, so I’m stuck trying to figure things out on 6.18.X for now.

Boot times resolved not long after my original post. Only CachyOS seems to be taking a bit more time than Manjaro used to. I can’t explain any of it. Ones and zeroes am I right?

System did not freeze/lock again, and I never got the crazy BIOS to OS lag again like I mentioned in my OP.

• I’m at 2 hard system freezes so far. While it’s a lot for it to happen twice in the first week, it hasn’t happened since so fingers crossed here.

• The system stopped charging maybe 4 or 5 times so far?

In conclusion
The first mainboard was equally frustrating at first and got really stable a few months after release so I’m expecting the same thing to happen here.

I’ve been investigating on and off, swapping expansion cards, etc, without keeping track of anything so no idea if all the updates coming in really did make anything better, or how much of it is all inside my head / pure chance, but I’ll try and be more thorough for the next few weeks.

I’m still loving the laptop. Hard to say how much of it is CachyOS vs the new mainboard, but the performance difference is still noticable every time I use it and what a joy it is to use! Love you Framework!

Btw, I apologize for the lack of organization and proper logging… I’ll do better for the next update.