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 It could probably be quite outdated as they may have improved the durability of this connector in the meantime.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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Like three years. I do not stay in one place.
So swap out and swap back in, two connect and disconnects per day for 3 years? Over 4300 cycles. If you expect an internal connector to preform flawlessly after that, then yea, you should cancel.
On the PCB side it seems to be just gold-plated copper pads. The lever springs on the cable side will be dragged across a tiny spot each time it’s screwed down or released & these are high speed PCIe signals, not a protocol like USB meant to handle contact wear. Maybe it will surprise us, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
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It certainly would be most days and will go past 50 in a blink of an eye. I will consider a new rig and an additional laptop, even if that is also an inconvenience. Maybe I will just fork out on a 14-16 inch razer.
I don’t think anyone saw @sciencewhiz answer to this “50 swaps”, so I’m going to clarify his answer.
This link, Expansion Bay connector durability - #30
was answered by Framework.
From what they said, it seems that the connector is rated pretty low on paper, but the testing they did demonstrated that it passed 2000 cycles.
I believe you misread or misunderstood.
They did not say that they tested this connector, the expansion bay connector, and it passed 2000 cycles. That was a pogo pin connector, a different type of connector. It was just an example of how there may not always be extensive testing behind a cycle count on a datasheet. Framework might ask for the expansion bay connector to be tested to higher cycles, but they haven’t said they’ve done that yet. I do think they very likely will ask for more testing, but we’ll have to wait & see.
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Isn’t an eGPU a much better solution for this? If you are going to switch so often, just get an eGPU, it uses an interface that is actually made for wear.
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Is there eGPU with GPU that is comparable to what FW16 offers and is at a similar price point? I think the eGPU enclosure can easily pass the whole price of the expansion bay card ($400).
I reread that again like 10 times before I finally saw…
- The cycle life in datasheets is rarely comprehensive. We’ve had instances where the datasheet on a connector (I think it was a pogo connector) said 100 cycles, and we asked the supplier to retest to 2000 cycles and found the connector passed that too.
Thank you for pointing out my 2 monkey brain cells.
I’m hoping their semi-custom connector will be hot-swappable, but wouldn’t hold on to it.
Depends on the enclosure probably, I got mine (Razor X Core) for $250 new. My eGPU also did cost $270, so I paid around $520 for both things but I can plug that in into my wifes laptop as well.
If the durability of the connector is of concern you should consider that you probably will be able to order a replacement if it breaks. And it appears to me that 50 is a very conservative estimation and is has been mentioned by @nrp in a different thread that the actual durability is much higher, like 1000+.