Audio Jack gone means working without a dock might go from difficult to impossible.
like the ones for the mac that uses both usb? Because of the card slot, it will be stronger
The laptop already has a keyboard, touchpad and screen. It seems like you want to use it as a desktop PC and in that case, needing a dock is quite common. Get a dock that includes a HDMI port and a USB hub will already reduce the used ports by a lot, getting one that additionally includes power delivery and a LAN port and you can handle all that stuff with a single port.
Maybe, but any third-party dock that supports USB4 or USB-Altmode should work fine. I wouldn’t expect an offiical dock from Framework.
I don’t think that docking station would suffice because it would be limited by a single USBC cable. And you said you wanted to connect two monitors and transfer data through it. So a single cable doesn’t work if you want to keep a good transfer speed for your data.
I do expect to use FW16 both as a laptop and as a stationary.
But I think that there won’t be a need to take keyboard+mouse+monitor with you and you could use USB splitter inside your monitor to connect mouse+keyboard. This would mean that these would be your connections instead of what you wrote about (I numbered them in brackets):
At this point we didn’t make any compromises in transfer speed of data but we did a compromise that you would be connecting your monitor through DP port (because USBC would do that anyway if you’d be using HDMI so it’s better to simply use one port and pipe your monitors through one cable).
So at this point one would be left with one free card slot. And other expansion cards would be forced to be: LAN, USBA(hub), DP, USBC(charge), 3.5mm.
xxx third monitor – this one can be connected via DP via daisychaining them so no additional ports are needed here.
xxx storage expansion cards – do you want to use USB stick and storage expansion together? Why not buy a second M2 SSD and put it inside?
And now it’s the time where the compromises begin:
xxx USB-Stick – this would be USBA
xxx connect phone with cable (e.g. to load pictures) – This one would be USBA too
You forgot to mention a memory card. And I actually use a memory card to flash my RPI’s OS.
So I would want to have one USBA and one memory card slot. But now I’ll be forced to use the monitor’s USB hub to transfer data from my phone and then my last expansion card would have to be USBA to connect my USB dongle to it.
The problem is – if I want to use MicroSD card then I have to swap the expansion card.
So how do I prevent this card swap?
This is not deliberate maxout, but now I miss one port (actually two).
I’d really have liked that the laptop would offer 8 expansion cards. I think this is very doable. The thinning of the chassis is not needed at the front of the laptop and this is just a designer’s choice. The cards could also be added via the back expansion panel. But I’d really like to not have the bottom-left+bottom-right thin chassis and have additional two expansion cards.
They could be placed a little diagonally to allow just a little of oval-like bottom design and it wouldn’t matter for an audio jack that doesn’t have a direction and the rarely-used microsd port.
And if anyone would want to put storage cards they could actually put them into these locations if they don’t want a jack or if they have OCD.
personally i’m not a fan of removing the jack precisely because it’s a very old and popular standard, but saying that removing it makes work undocked impossible is just not accurate. the macbook air has two thunderbolts and the headphone jack. we can argue that “not everyone likes this setup” but it does sell more than enough. also, it would be interesting to poll users but i doubt that most framework users ever switch the expansion cards around (i have 3x usb-c and 1x usb-a and i never touched them).
not sure if someone has brought this up, but i think this comes from the fact that framework’s experience with audio isn’t exactly the best. in my framework 13 there is static noise every now and then and without a proper preset the speakers just suck. this way one gets to have easier upgrades i think.
i have a 2K screen, several peripherals, charging and audio passing through a single usb-c port. it’s more than enough.
Thanks for clarifying.
What I thought about was actually pushing the screens into high Hz rates like 120Hz or 165Hz. Then the bandwidth would be squeezed more. I was trying to think about a setup where I’d actually max everything out as much as possible.
Of course you could connect several screens with 60Hz like in docks that are based on DisplayLink driver. Those docks allow 2x4K@60hz screens via a single USB cable but they’re capped to 60Hz refresh rate (I think this is how your USB dock should work). Probably they could offer more Hz for smaller resolutions but the way that DisplayLink driver works is that they don’t really send the whole frame and they only send part of the screen update and then recreate whole frame in the DP dock itself. So if you have flashy things like games then the frame performance wouldn’t be there and CPU use would go way up (they’re using CPU to shrink the size of the stream). So you would have your screens but your CPU use would be large. This is why I wasn’t proposing this as an option. Of course you could do it and for work it’s more than enough of performance. But it would make the laptop fan spin more than a direct DP/HDMI connection.
So no, when you get a USBA dock that you connect two DP cables to they actually do a lot of work inside and it’s CPU-heavy.
Also if the GPU module of FW16 would support a screen then there wouldn’t be a need for this DisplayLink connection because you would be connecting directly to the GPU on the back of the laptop. But then if you would connect a dock there (let’s say it’s USBC at the back of GPU module) you should probably be throttled back onto the DisplayLink mode of operation where the Hz would be capped to 60Hz or something similar).
Do you use your 2K screen at high refresh rate or 60Hz?
This is a picture of the dock that I had in mind (the size of it says that there is a lot of complicated stuff happening there):
@Martynas you are trying to imagine a setup that is not really “appropiate” for an iGPU.
For something that is 2x 2K with 120Hz or even 165Hz I would suggest to use an (d/e)GPU, especially if you are doing GPU-heavy tasks.
For most other setups, a thunderbolt or even usb c dock should suffice, even with data and display information going through the same cable (especially with DP-alt).
If you want an extreme solution, take a look at the Anker 777 Thunderbolt Docking Station.
Edit:
So my suggestion: Use one thunerbolt port for displays + power and the other for data only. That way, you should have the maximum efficiency possible.
@Martynas These are Thunderbolt ports at 40Gb/s. Also capable of handling data and power at the same time. High refresh rate gaming at above 4K? You’ll need an eGPU or the dGPU module regardless so you that either gets it’s own dedicated TB cable or dGPU module. Everything else can fit on a single cable. 10Gb LAN plus audio jack plus 4 ports at 5Gb/s is still only 30Gb/s. Charging is a non-issue. Unless you want everything to have it’s own port on the laptop? I’m a little confused if a dock is acceptable to you or not.
I personally use an eGPU with a built-in USB hub that services all my needs. Granted, my USB hub actually requires a separate cable USB-A cable to avoid leeching Thunderbolt bandwidth from the eGPU but still…
I have 3 USB ports in that hub, one for mouse, one for keyboard, one for a USB to RJ45 Gigabit adapter. All get max bandwidth I think. A proper Thunderbolt dock will have even grater connectivity built in.
EDIT: Sadly, no, all my extra connectivity does not get max bandwidth, they must all share a USB 5Gb/s connection. That sucks but oh well. Realistically I’ll never saturate that bus with the attached peripherals anyways. Even if I attach an SATA SSD in the eGPU enclosure as well, I’ll still never saturate it.
I’d only connect one screen because I don’t need more and I only talked about theoretical limit because 2x4K@60Hz should be the same amount of traffic as 4K@120Hz. But these docks don’t say that this is what they do. I tried the dock that I talked about and it didn’t do 120Hz on one screen but maybe my driver was bad or something.
Anker dock that you linked didn’t also say that they do more than 60Hz.
They say that they can do 8K which I don’t need but if it’s 60Hz on 2K then what’s the point of trying it. Also if they use CPU a lot or introduce lag then it’s also a problem.
So I think that unless somebody here tested a dock that connects via USB and gets more than 60Hz we can’t say anything.
Of course you can connect LAN, Mouse, Keyboard and everything. But Mouse and Keyboard don’t really take much traffic as a monitor with high refresh rate. Also LAN lag isn’t that big of a deal if it’s only shared with mouse and keyboard.
But if you’d connect a 2K@120Hz screen then it should in theory take about the same traffic as 4K@30Hz. And if the USB dock supports up to 8k@30Hz then it could in theory keep up but based on the way that DisplayLink driver works I don’t think they’ll allow more than 60Hz in any configuration because CPU would immediately go to 100%.
@Martynas Oh, you mean like office work at 120hz? at 4K? Oh, that’s easy. All one cable then. Thunderbolt will just embed a DP signal. Image pulled from manufacturer website. It’ll do 4K @120hz.
Honestly you don’t need something that expensive though for what you describe. 3 Displays at 1440P@120Hz would be pushing the limits of Thunderbolt but just one display? That’s easy and can be handled by one cable along with peripherals.
Alright. Maybe it will work then. We’ll see what will be offered during release.
I also don’t think people even need 4K screens but we’ll see.
If anybody has one that they bought then it would be a good thing to know their opinion and to know whether they work in Linux. There was a driver for Linux but it didn’t work properly or at all (I don’t remember).
this is sort of irrelevant when discussing the lack of a headphone jack. audio bandwidth is negligible in most cases for a thunderbolt cable, unless one actually wants to plug a mixer with 40x 24bit inputs on at the same time, which isn’t exactly comparable to a headphone jack.
extra screens are completely off topic here, and once again, audio bandwidth is negligible in comparison.
The outcome is that you only need one port to cover all your monitor needs. Whatever fancy the setup you mostly only need one port. Which means that there is space for a built-in audio jack because not all ports are needed. (also I’m not a big fan of slim front-left and front-right design and it could’ve been thick and accomodate a jack and a little larger battery)
So you’re not a fan of removing the jack but you’re not a fan of the jack quality in FW13?
Wouldn’t this also be an issue if they would bake-in a 3.5mm jack into FW16 and somebody would not like the quality? Also do workstation docks offer better 3.5 jacks and you know that you wouldn’t get into the same issue? At least you can change the 3.5mm expansion card.
Also inFW16 you can have the jack in any side of the laptop.
we agree here. ideally i would like to have a headphone jack because “why not” but of course in the fw case the whole audio component seems a bit sub-par, but still very usable. for whoever buys the 16 this won’t be a problem, but i still hope for a better component for my 13.
I can handle the removal of the audio jack purely for the reason it means I can choose where I want my wired cans connected. Depending on the headphones I’m using and what I’m using them with, I can want the cable to be on the left or the right of the device.
I know I’m an odd case - but it is all about the - user defined - options.
On the flip side, my new hearing aid has no facility for a direct input cable. So 3.5s are no go and my options are either bluetooth (built in to hearing aid) or a £2,500 specialist radio system designed for the hearing aid. I don’t have that kind of money lying around.
Quite frankly, the main concern of a 3.5 audio jack on an expansion card is what it’s going to do to battery life? Pretty much any of the expansion cards other than the USB-C pass-through cause significant power draw, both when the system is on and when the system is suspended; even passive cards such as the USB-A.
… but now with the overhead of a USB-C interface sitting in-between and the logic for allowing the thing to be hot-plugged. It looks to me like a straightforward implementation would likely use more power (when present) than a hard-wired-in jack. You’ll probably have to work hard to reduce that to (near) nothing. I hope they can and will do that.
I’m pretty sure they were caught of-guard by the USB-A using noticeable power. A wired USB-A on a motherboard does not use that kind of power when nothing is plugged into it. Similarly for their HDMI cards etc.
The modularity of doing everything over USB-C definitely comes at a (power) price. Had I known, I would have bought 4 USB-C expansion cards for when on the road. It really saves quite a bit of battery life when suspended.
@anon81945988 The issue is that the Thunderbolt port “sees” something plugged in all the time and thus does not suspend when the computer suspends, thus draining power when it shouldn’t. The latest firmware revision for the Displayport card tricks the Thunderbolt card into “seeing” an HID instead of Displayport when no display is attached, so the port is allowed to power down/go to a low-power state. Similar problems exist for all but the USBC card because that is simple pass-through and not conversion like the others, so the TB ports “see” nothing when those are plugged in.
