Yeah, I was surprised to see no nvidia gpu’s on launch, or the battery expansion system. I’m guessing this is a product of AMD jumping on board with this projection enthusiastically, vs. nvidia’s tendencies to bully manufacturers around.
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I’m not expecting hot-swap, but 50 does feel too small considering the expansion port is for a range of possible options. Someone who wants to swap between the gpu when gaming, and extra storage when editing video for example, will very quickly burn through 50 swaps and set themselves up for glitches and intermitent connection.
But it is true this is better than anything else so far and a great start.
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I completely agree, I was personally very interested in a similar use case and am also disappointed. Perhaps in time additional solutions will present themselves.
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Who knows, maybe this is going to be upgraded in later revisions? I agree that 50 swaps feel a bit less, but then again, I don’t believe I’ve seen a system yet that even allows for so many swaps.
Can you guys please guide me to where you’ve read the “50 swaps” only? I have not seen that on neither the product page nor on the market place itself.
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Considering the fact that you need to partially disassemble things to even remove the expansion bay, it’s naturally going to really slow someone down. Swapping back and forth just won’t be practical.
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From the datasheet for the connector. FX Beam incorporates the X beam connector, it just uses different alignment pins.
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Thanks, isn’t that only the connector though? I could see Framework both upgrading it in the future and also selling those seperately for people in need of such.
I think it would have been good/honest to include this information on either the product page or even the module details on the market site …
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I don’t understand what you mean here.
Changing the connector will kill compatibility for future upgrades. I think Framework would really try to avoid that. I believe others can already use both the connector and Framework’s implementation of it. Framework would like others to create compatible devices. They post nearly everything to their github.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I am not a native english speaker.
I was talking about “You can probably easily replace the connector if it breaks”.
And also a future upgrade on the connector (not a different design) could make it longer-lasting.
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It depends on which is the weak point: the interposer that connects the two sets of pads or the pads themselves. I expect it would be the interposer, but at least right now there’s no indication that replacement connectors would be available. If the pads were to wear out though you’re SOL without advanced soldering skills.
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Agreed to all of the above.
Just realized the product specification is from 11/2020, so soon 3 years old. It could probably be quite outdated as they may have improved the durability of this connector in the meantime.
Maybe @nrp or @Kieran_Levin could chime in… summoning dance
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The interposer will likely not wear out as much (probably could do upwards of 1k cycles) but the issue is that the interposer slowly scratches the PCB of whatever you are swapping out, so unless you have a really thick and hard layer of gold you will eventually have no plating on the PCB.
This is all wrong.
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Nvidia is notoriously hard to work with even for huge companies so it isn’t a huge surprise would still be nice though.
It may be easier to convince a gpu manufacturer that allready has a somewhat working relationship with nvidia to make a module than for framework to do it themselves. Maybe ask one of the smaller ones that doesn’t also make laptops XD.
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Nvidia can’t hear them from on top of the huge stack of e-currency farming & cloud compute cash they’re sitting on, lol
That limit is important I think. Is the connection point in the mainboard? Expecting it is, so when you upgrade that in a few years you’re getting a new connector.
Engineering it to be more robust while accepting the same plug may even be possible. But IDK - they or their component partner can work on that.
Reminds me a bit of Molex and the 12VHPWR connectors. Those have surprisingly low reconnect ratings, too. But most of us don’t change those frequently - computer shops do and get away with more than you expect, but they kinda know or learn that limit.
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If anyone hasn’t seen it yet, the Verge video shows the connector pretty well.
Starts talking about the GPU module at 2m49s
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FYI, PCI Express is also only rated for (at least) 50 cycles:
(see site 101, 6.4.1. Environmental Requirements)
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I’ll be swapping the 7700s in and out on a daily basis. If this is problematic then I’ll just cancel the pre-order.
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How long do you need it to last in order to not cancel?
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