FW13 Upgrade from 2021 11th Gen (Batch 2) to Ryzen™ AI 9 HX 370

Framework Laptop 13
,
1

Hi,

I just completed an upgrade of my old FW13, and thought I’d share my experience (generally awesome) and a couple of things I learned.

Parts that were from the original and retained: Chassis, Keyboard, Trackpad, SN850X 2TH SSD
Parts that had already been upgraded: 61Wh battery, 2.8K screen
Parts included in this upgrade: Mainboard, RAM, Wi-Fi

Mechanical compatibility was 100% - no issues at all.

Given the cost and scarcity of RAM, I settled for an unmatched pair of SK Hynix 32GB Rx8 PC5-5600B-SB0-1010-XT SODIMMs (with slightly different PNs). To mitigate the risk, I tested extensively with MEMTEST86 before installing the OS, and with TestMem5 under Windows. I have had no problems at all. Very encouraging is that these train in just a few seconds - which suggests that the timings are nominal as far as the DRAM controller sees. No WHEA errors after about a week of use.

I decided to re-use my 2TB SN850X SSD. I’m not sure that this was a good choice for a laptop with limited cooling, but it’s still working fine (SMART shows 99% “life” remaining and nothing concerning about its lifetime thermals).
I did add a thick thermal pad on the top of it and I think it does conduct some heat to the keyboard (I can see the hot spot with my thermal camera when the pad is fitted). I am seeing ~40C at idle and ~54C when running CrystalDiskMark - but I can’t find a tool that shows controller temp so that’s not really exhaustive.
I did notice that the CPU fan chamber gets quite close to the SDD. A carefully engineered hole there could bleed a small amount of air over the SSD… but I’m not about to drill one.

The only issue I had was trying to update the BIOS before installing the OS drive using the disk image in Framework_Laptop_13_RyzenAI300_BIOS_4.02_EFI.zip. It wouldn’t run until I used DiskPart to set the GUID of partition 1 on the USB to make it an EFI partition. Maybe I missed a stage in the instructions… anyway, with that done the BIOS updated correctly.

My impressions of the upgrade are super positive. The performance is light-years better than the old CPU, and it just feels like a more finished product. The CPU temps were always an issue with the original - but the modern CPU combined with the improved cooling (better heat-pipe, much better TIC) are giving really nice temps under my working loads. The Media-Tek Wi-Fi 7 module is good, connects on 5&6GHz links to my router and meets speed expectations.

I had become ambivalent as to whether I’d go with Framework for my “new” laptop (“repairable” is good, but “needs repairing again” isn’t). But this experience has rekindled my enthusiasm - I didn’t find anything that gave me the specs I wanted (lightish, smallish, 64G RAM, 2TB SSD, >1080 screen, Wi-Fi 7, high-end modern CPU) for a comparable cost to this upgrade (or even at any cost).

Sorry, I rambled a bit there…

~GP

1 Like
2

A curiosity question - is there a command one can run to determine if an unmatched pair of memory modules have correctly fallen into dual-channel mode? I am given to believe it does not always happen.

3

Good thinking - I hadn’t checked.

I’m not sure that with two SODIMMs it’s possible to not be dual-channel (at least on one level) - I think there are 128 data signals (64 each) - but maybe the memory controller can interlace these accesses if the sticks are of different capacity - IDK.

Anyway, CPU-Z reports 4 x 32-bit memory channels and Intel MLC measures memory bandwidth (reads) around 76GB/s.

So it’s running at 85% of the theoretical 5.6GT/s x 128 bits which is very good and definitely dual channel - and adds to “fast training” as evidence of compatibility between CPU, mainboard and the SK Hynix sticks.

1 Like