Is this new adapter going to be also sold standalone, like the current 60W one? I assumed so but didn’t mention that earlier. I’m eyeing it as “the single adapter to have in the travel backpack”, for my existing FW 13 and assorted devices (phones mostly).
Hence the intense hope that it has more than one outputs.
Humm 180w, or 240W, we are far to install 4090 for gaming … with 13900 hx or 13950…
That brings the question: Was the FL16 ever meant to target gamers / high-end gaming?
I think it’s a partial yes…for less demanding games, and a partial no to the high-end side of things.
It is clear to me that modularity and repairability are top priority for this product. Gaming is important, but secondary. In situations where one of the two has to be compromised, it will be the latter. For example, barrel connectors are a tool for vendor lock-in and should be off the table (also due to regulatory concerns). These principles are precisely why I became a Framework customer, and I truly hope that they never change. They’re also what makes the product unique.
In addition to the challenges that come with repairability, the product will have a wide range of configurations with various levels of power consumption. This would be difficult for any company of any size to handle. If Framework only designs one new charger, I would prefer this fairly compact one over an Alienware-sized one. Customers that want <180W and ones that want >180W will both exist, and they are free to use alternate power supplies, as they should (yes, 240W is coming).
I’m willing to accept that the lack of a barrel jack is for regulatory reasons. However, even from a startup, I fundamentally disagree with practices that rely on something else. Framework is intentionally shipping the 16 without full functionality. If the silicon for 240W is available, they should delay the release until they have the capital and R&D to produce an adapter that allows full functionality.
Maybe this is my gamer side complaining about releasing a broken or half finished game and completing it with bug fixes and dlc, haha.
I highly doubt there will be gpu egpansion bays that need more than the 180w brick available before a bigger psu is available so not delivering full functionality is a bit of a hard word here.
If you don’t actually need the 240w, you get the extra bulk and weight for nothing so I guess they made a power brick for their laptop not just the biggest one that is possible.
Framework is intentionally shipping the 16 without full functionality. If the silicon for 240W is available, they should delay the release until they have the capital and R&D to produce an adapter that allows full functionality.
Maybe this is my gamer side complaining about releasing a broken or half finished game and completing it with bug fixes and dlc, haha.
What’s to say 180W isn’t full functionality? What if the initial 16 ships with up to a 4050 or 4060, which are fairly commonly restricted to ~100W power draw, and Intel P or AMD HS series CPUs?
The 180W power adapter is an optional accessory. You don’t HAVE to use it. And to that, the FL16 supports 240W USB PD. i.e. the functionality is there. Whether you can ‘utilise’ it is a matter of the power adapter / accessory you choose.
e.g. It doesn’t come with a mouse, doesn’t mean the functionality is not there to use a mouse with it.
Onto a different matter:
In an unplugged situation, can the battery alone support 180W? Or will the compute / graphics performance be limtied to the cell drain capacity (high drain vs average drain)…to something lower than 180W? (The C rating in the cells, I think)
@Qyygle @anon81945988 Framework themselves have said that the FW 16 laptop will need to draw from battery under high workloads. This would imply that some configurations are capable of drawing more than 180W, so it’s Framework telling us the limitations of the functionality. Not speculation.
@Second_Coming From what I’ve read elsewhere, 240W adapters are not available today by any manufacturer. So this is not currently a matter of personal choice.
Then by the same token, the 180W is not available today, nor is the FL16.
i.e. What are you currently really saying?
It’s still a choice…because you can go lower if you need to, say 140W instead.
This may be true, but (as much as I hate to say it), imagine Dell or any other high end manufacturer saying “here’s a high performance studio laptop and a dock which is one of the laptop’s main selling points that only works with the laptop. By the way, if you want to leave that combo crunching numbers overnight, you can’t until someone else allows you to. Your move.”
There are a lot of uses that involve sustained graphics load that would check that box, and so this really feels like another on the pile of compromises that this laptop is shaping up to be (and one that I actually care about this time, unlike a better screen or hot swap or a powerful integrated graphics chip). I love Framework and its mission, but I expressed my concerns about a second flagship early after its reveal and I’m starting to worry that the company isn’t yet mature enough to please enough of the market for the 16” to be a worthwhile venture.
The announcement itself. A laptop shouldn’t drain battery when being used on charge. It’s not as bad as say shipping with a poor cooling solution that would thermal throttle, but the fact that framework is just expecting you to go somewhere else (that doesn’t necessarily conform to its values, mind you) is a stretch to me.
I don’t need a mouse to make my computer run at full performance for extended periods, which is a substantial part of the use case for a high performance laptop with a recent mobile gpu. A company should ship products with everything needed to enable the advertised features.
Where does it say that 240W is required for the laptop to run at full performance?
For all we know, it could be a 45W CPU with a 60W GPU… That is, the details of power consumption have not been released yet.
You are confusing the USB-PD negotiation wattage support with the performance / power consumption characteristic of the product.
It’s more the “extended periods” part. It’ll run, but it’ll draw from the battery, which should not be (in my opinion) intended behavior for a device which is presently tethered to a wall by a power supply.
As to the actual consumption specs, if the company is worried about it enough to make it part of the blog post, it’s pretty likely that the power draw is going to be an issue for consumers. I don’t like that their solution for that issue is to tell the consumers to fix it themselves.
Hey folks, this is getting a little contentious and there’s a whole lot of assumptions being thrown around. We’ll release more information over time as we’re still very much in development and things are fluid. I can see this quickly turning south, and I’m going to have to ask to please not make assumptions until more concrete information is provided. We’ll be releasing more updates over the coming weeks. Until then, let’s please stay civil, and assume good intent. Thank you.
Again, for extended use / plugged-in use case, we don’t know what the components are yet. And therefore, don’t know how much will be drawn.
I agree that there are assumptions involved, but only the ones pointed out in the original post:
I appreciate the commitment to info updates! If Framework manages to through either their own power adapter or efficiency engineering make the above quote not the case anymore in the coming weeks, then this whole discussion is moot.
This happens annoyingly frequently around here… I’ve been fairly vocal in my opinion regarding the display and touchpad, and I am always happy to see discussion on what would be “best”, but certain people make a big show about how the upcoming design “checks all of their boxes” but “oh no, there’s this one thing that framework needs to change or they might risk losing a customer!!!” – or something to that effect.
People aren’t actually disappointed in what they see, they’re just trying to play the drama queen in the hopes of bending the final design into their niche use case. Admittedly, I did approach that territory with my touchpad post, but I didn’t require a particular solution – only that the 16’s touchpad be better than the 13’s (which isn’t exactly a hot take in the first place).
@Matthew_Elmer Completely second the point. I believe people are also looking for different things. For example, I am a former Razer enthusiast (yes, too expensive, but doing things others couldn’t) who now turned framework enthusiast and doesn’t mind if battery is drained if it gives me 1 more fps ;). My main thought is about watercooling the GPU bay, and stuff like that ;).
But others may be more productivity focused, so don’t assume one laptop can do it all…
PS: I think 240W is a good “compromise”, 175W for GPU sounds about right ;).
I’m late to this thread and it’s only tangently related, but I’ve got to wonder if the mentioned-by-Linus secondary removable battery that can go into the dGPU/m.2 expansion port can/will have its own type-C connector so that:
you can charge the battery even while its removed from the laptop (that way you can have two and charge one battery while using the other battery or the like)
free up one of the USB-C expansion slots if you really want to maximize the amount of I/O
People in other threads have done deep dives into the connector for the expansion bay. It very much does not seem to be designed for hot swapping. As in USB C is rated for 10000 insertion/removal cycles, PCIe is designed for maybe 50-100, and this connector for even less. This is fragile, it appears to require a number of screws and removal of the keyboard tray to detach. Again, somewhat speculation but these were users diving into the schematics of the connector and bay. Don’t get too excited about hot-swapping batteries just yet. Wait until they talk about the expansion bay officially.