Help! If anyone from FW is seeing this, we need more VRAM ;)

[Kyle_Reis]

@Shirley_Dulcey

A 200W or 240W expansion bay module would require a second power adapter just for the expansion bay

Not necessarily.

The expansion bay connector is rated to deliver 210w at 20v (238.1w total across various voltages) from the motherboard to the expansion bay.

Also AMD’s recently announced high end laptop GPU goes up to 180w. Add in the 45w of the CPU and that’s 225w. Add in everything else from the laptop and that is probably right around 240w. So with a single 240w USB-PD supply that would hold the battery pretty steady.

@Shirley_Dulcey

Another possible path would be a partnership with a company that makes GPUs, similar to the deal with Cooler Master for the mainboard case. (We found out in one of the recent blog posts that Framework was already working with Cooler Master on the CPU coolers in the laptops, so that deal didn’t come from out of the blue.) MSI and Gigabyte probably won’t be interested because they also make laptops, but a company like Powercolor might be.

Powercolor (technically TUL, but Powercolor is just a brand name used by TUL for GPUs) is actually already the company that is making the current 7700S GPU for the Framework Laptop 16.

[FlyingTypeTrainer]

@Kyle_Reis

Also AMD’s recently announced high end laptop GPU goes up to 180w. Add in the 45w of the CPU and that’s 225w. Add in everything else from the laptop and that is probably right around 240w. So with a single 240w USB-PD supply that would hold the battery pretty steady.

My hope is that we get to that with the next gpu in the expansion bay. For now I think the 100 watts makes sense because while the spec is there for 240 watts I am just not aware of anyone who actually makes a 240 watt USB C charger. Framework even seems to be the first that is getting to 180 watts. There are some chargers out there with combined outputs of up to 240 watts but none of them on a single line. The most you can find on a single cable out there right now is 140 watts. In a year or two I hope that we have full 240 watts over a single cable and then it will make a lot more sense to have more powerful gpus in the expansion bay.

[Kyle_Reis]

@FlyingTypeTrainer

I am just not aware of anyone who actually makes a 240 watt USB C charger. Framework even seems to be the first that is getting to 180 watts.

That is because until now there were no PD controller chips to support over 140w to a single device. But recently the first chip of that kind became available.

Framework is the first company to use that chip, however they decided not to take advantage of the full 240w that chip is capable of as that would require making other parts of the charger bigger and bulkier whereas Framework wanted to keep it compact.

Now that that chip exists it is much easier for other companies to produce 240w charging bricks (all the chips and components they need already exist, it’s just a matter of integrating them together). Framework has said (and I agree) that they expect other companies to come out with 240w bricks in the near future.

[Shirley_Dulcey]

@Kyle_Reis

Also AMD’s recently announced high end laptop GPU goes up to 180w. Add in the 45w of the CPU and that’s 225w. Add in everything else from the laptop and that is probably right around 240w.

I suppose that could lead to a GPU with two or even three power profiles. The lowest performance mode would be at 120W or thereabouts while using the current Framework 180W supply. The second mode would be at 180W using a 240W supply, when one becomes available. The highest power mode would be 240W, plugging a second power supply directly into the GPU module. That would allow the owner to make different convenience vs power tradeoffs for different situations.

@Kyle_Reis

Powercolor (technically TUL, but Powercolor is just a brand name used by TUL for GPUs) is actually already the company that is making the current 7700S GPU for the Framework Laptop 16.

Nice to know, and a good move on Framework’s part. Working with companies that have expertise in specific areas is a better strategy than trying to do everything themselves, especially at this point in the company’s development. So yes, please launch a higher end GPU some time in 2024.