I’ve run into a weird behavior with my Framework 13 (Ryzen 7840U) and my new UGreen Nexode 200W/25000mAh power bank. I’m curious if anyone else on the 3.05 BIOS is seeing this.
When I plug the power bank in while the laptop is around 40-50% battery, instead of the laptop drawing power from the bank, the Framework starts trying to charge the power bank. The “charging” LED on the side of the laptop stays off, but the screen on the UGreen shows it’s receiving 5-10W from the laptop.
Things I’ve tried:
Flipping the cable: Sometimes unplugging and flipping the USB-C cable fixes it and it starts drawing 60W+, but it’s 50/50.
Ports: Tried both the back-left and back-right expansion cards (USB-C). Same result.
Kernel: I’m on Ubuntu 24.04 (Kernel 6.8).
It feels like a Power Delivery (PD) handshake issue where the laptop thinks it’s the primary power source. I know there were similar threads about the Anker 737 doing this, but I thought the UGreen would be more “mature” with the Framework’s handshake logic.
Is there a way in the BIOS or via tlp / powertop to force the Framework to only sink power from a specific port rather than sourcing it?
I have the exact same powerbank, I’ll test on mine later, as I normally only use the 100w out-only port.
I have some other “misbehaving” power bank, the solution for those is using the Anker 1-to-2 140W USB-C cable (A8895) that have one end that is IN only and two others that are OUT only, that forces the port that is connected to the IN end of the cable to be supply.
No, at least I can’t find the BIOS setting with Smokeless UMAF or I don’t know the name of the setting. TLP is a userspace power management tool that cannot reach the EC. ectool can but there’s no setting to force the “sink” status, only can adjust the values like chg_current_limit
This is a PD handshake issue. The Framework 13 cannot force a port to sink via BIOS or TLP. Use an output-only port on the power bank or a 1-to-2 IN/OUT cable to ensure correct power direction. Flipping the cable can also help.