Framework Docking Station Mockup

Creators & Developers Expansion Card
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Another little idea I had. Dimensions are the same as that of the Framework. Designed with the assumption that it will be plugged into the top left slot, but can technically be rotated and plugged in any way.
Focused on things the Framework can’t fit and trying to run the SATA drive at at least SATA II speeds so no extraneous USB ports or display outs here. Drives, sd card slot, and 80mm fan are to scale. Forgot to scale the expansion card.
Something similar already exists and doesn’t even require thunderbolt speeds:

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As a friendly pointer: Even the older USB 3.1 spec can easily hit 10Gb/s, which is plenty enough for a SATA III link. With this in mind, you shouldn’t have to limit yourself if you go with thunderbolt as it can easily go up to 30 or 40 Gb/s.

Another thing that many people seem to have a craving for on the forums is some form of mobile ‘dedicated’ graphics, which your dock could provide via MXM maybe?

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I think an MXM may be better left for it’s own similar dock as it would raise the price significantly. I’d rather have a bunch more USB 2 ports on the back and a cheaper dock lol

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Hey,
I tought about some kind of Docking Mockup in a diffrent way.
A USB-C Thunderbold Dock without cables just Ports, funktional like the Lenovo/Dell Docks, with some Framework extension Ports and fixed USB-A + USB-C/Thunderbolt to the BAckside.
This should be useable wia cable or some kind of plugin under the Laptop using both Ports left and right to the Display.
The could also a bigger housing which has a Notebook Drive Bay for Optical, HDD/SSD or Akku Extensions.
The last part is a set of one or two Monitor Stands: One Integrate the dock, some extensions and a Powersupply and the second als integrates place for a PCI Desktop GPU.
Parts are:

  • Portreplicator: integrates Extension ports + maybe some fixed ports.
  • small Dock: aka Portreplicator
  • big Dock: integrates Portreplicator, Drive bay…
  • Small Monitor Stand: Integrates Powersupply + Portreplicator
  • Big Monitor Stand: Powersupply, Portreplicator + egpu
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