If your CPU breaks why can’t you replace it? After all, it is a replaceable laptop.
It would make the laptop significantly thicker similar to back long ago when laptops have low powered desktop CPUs like Clevo which most people wouldn’t be that interested.
Technically I think you can desolder and reball a new CPU but I would think the CPU is one of the parts which have a really low probability of failure.
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Socketed mobile CPUs are no longer made by Intel or AMD.
Also this
I hear it happens, but it’s extremely rare. You’re almost guaranteed that multiple other things will break first.
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In addition to what was already said I will point out that, especially with AMD, laptop CPUs (which are not designed to be user swappable) are meaningfully different from desktop CPUs, so Framework couldn’t just put a user swappable desktop CPU into a laptop without downsides.
For example AMD desktop CPUs use a chiplet architecture whereas AMD laptop CPUs use a monolithic architecture.
A chiplet architecture means the CPU is divided up into multiple smaller chips. This has the upside of making it cheaper and easier for AMD to scale CPUs to higher core counts, however the downside is that the communication between those multiple chips is somewhat power intensive, which is why laptop CPUs use monolithic architectures for better battery life.
Another difference between laptop CPUs and desktop CPUs is the manufacturing process.
AMD’s laptop CPUs generally use one of the latest and greatest manufacturing process (currently TSMC 4nm) to eek out maximum power efficiency. AMD’s desktop CPUs on the other hand generally use a slightly plder manufacturing process (currently TSMC 5nm/6nm) which may be slightly cheaper and less prone to producing defective CPUs than the latest processes.
The third major difference thay I will highlight are the iGPUs (GPUs integrated into CPUs).
AMD has started including iGPUs standard on their desktop CPUs, however those iGPUs are an order of magnitude less powerful than the iGPUs in AMD’s laptop CPUs. This means that if desktop CPUs were used then more customers would need to pay extra for a dedicated GPU to get GPU performance that rhwy consider good enough, increasing cost.
So Framework likely wont be using any of the currently available user swappable CPUs as those are all designed to be used in desktops. If in the future AMD or Intel releases a user-swappable laptop CPU then Framework may use that, although I doubt there is enough demand for AMD or Intel to release a CPU like that.
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what about using a
CPU…if thay can convince AMD and Intel.
Or they can use non-available user-swappable CPUs and sell it on their website.
How much money are willing to spend for a feature like that that only a single customer of AMD/Intel is going to use?
I think it would be way cheaper to stick with soldered CPUs and replace the mainboard in case it breaks.
Very good writeup! My one nitpick is that, although it hasn’t happened yet for Zen 4 or the AM5 socket, most or all of AMD’s previous monolithic Ryzen mobile parts have eventually found their way into socketed desktop models. They’re usually released much later and somewhat less optimized for power efficiency - I certainly wouldn’t want in a laptop.