I noticed this gap between the top and bottom covers, and I thought maybe the screws needed tightening or something. I opened up the laptop, and this is what the battery looks like. I think this is why the top cover doesn’t sit flush with the bottom cover, because after some cleaning and screw-tightening, the gap is still there. I’m not an expert so I ask here: Is my battery swollen? If yes, should I stop using the laptop for safety until I get a battery replacement?
I got this laptop in December 2023. If the battery is swollen, is this normal for a battery life (Just over 2 years) ? I do game a lot on it, and keep it plugged in often, and don’t have battery charge limit to 80% as some recommend.
Yes, it is swollen. Especially if you can’t press/click the touchpad. I’ve had the exact same issue and got a refurbished battery for free by support. Got my Framework 13 in October 2023. Got the replacement battery last summer 2025.
If you’re going to keep it mostly plugged in, you should definitely limit charge to <80% or use the battery wear mitigation feature FW developed. If you don’t feel like having to continually go into BIOS to change the charge level, there’s a tool on the forums called YAFI that allows you to control it while using your computer’s operating system.
FIY I used to have no charging limit either. It stayed at 100% percent all the time and I ran the laptop hot with heavy workloads. The support still replaced it for free. But now I use a BIOS limit of 80% for my current battery.
Aside from running laptop hot often, another factor I’m thinking of is the charging cable. I use this Anker Flow cable (100W) to charge all my electronics including my laptop (also Steam deck, phone, e-reader, watch, earphones). Can that be a contributing factor?
For heat, try repasting with PTM 7950/58. If you’re using an AMD 7000 series board from 2023, there’s a good chance the paste it shipped with isn’t phase change material. My FW used to run super hot when gaming and I found that the paste it shipped with had some substantial pump out. A good portion of the die was no longer substantially covered.
Most will tell you to buy a sheet from Linus Sebastian’s site (LTT or something), and I’d recommend the same, but if you don’t like the prospect of working with the sheets, I bought the paste from MODDIY and it seems legit based on temp improvements.
I’m also charging with 98W. This should not be the cause. The charging speed which Framework put into the firmware should be reasonable and well tested. And if not, it would be their job to fix the Firmware.
Didn’t change anything on my system. The heat is the same. But I can now get more performance because it can finally pull more watts. A 7840u can sustain 43W with disabled STAPM.
If you need an alternative PTM supplier, I’m using Thermal Grizzly’s PhaseSheet. I don’t know if its a rebrand or their own product, but its genuine and my benchmarks confirm it performs the same as the real Honewell PTM.
It’s interesting. Mine runs about ~20 degrees C cooler at load, and still a few degrees cooler at idle. I’ll have to pull up BTOP and put the board through some stress tests to see if that’s still the case. I don’t even have the newer heatsink–the paste itself was just that good.
The drop can be attributed to the battery putting up with being max charged it’s whole life. The high state of charge finally took its toll and degraded a little. Surprised it is not further degraded.
Since it is kept plugged in and under higher loads, limit it to 50% for now until a replacement arrives. Then I would suggest leaving it at 70% really since it sits on the desk most of its life.
It is not that dangerous currently but leaving it charged at 100% in its current state is not wise.
The laptop controls all the charging so the charger used is really independent of the issue here. Anker is a quality brand for both chargers and cables.
The Thermal Grizzly PTM material is known to be a good quality and has a good reputation of not selling inferior or counterfeit stuff. Not saying Linus’ stuff is not good but they just found a supplier overseas and branded it their own. I would stick with buying from a company that cooling is part of their business personally. LTT is trying to build a brand and media following.
It’s pretty sad to see that this has become the “new normal”. In the old days when laptop batteries were made of 18650 cells. Max charged was common and battery wear wasn’t amplified that much. Now it’s “surprised” when a battery that doesn’t swell (or swell less) after being max charged for a while
It’s not bad to have 90% capacity after 2 years of use. The quick drop, I have no idea, did your thermal paste degrade by the time causing more heat to transfer from the mainboard to the battery?
Hey @x11 Yep. That’s a ‘spicy pillow’. Feel free to DM me with the email address you used to contact support and I’ll help out. Also, please ensure that your BIOS is fully up to date as our recent BIOs updates have changed the charging logic.
Fun fact, if you don’t want to read then entire thread: my PTM delivers the same benchmarks and temps as liquid metal. So past PTM/liquid metal, the heatsink becomes the bottleneck.
Shin-Etsu isn’t bad, but phase change material is better.
BTW, are there ways to improve the cooling of the battery itself? Does it firmly on the bottom chassis when screwed in? What about a very thin thermal pad between the battery and the chassis?
Mine is Manufacture Date: 2023/11/3and I got my FW16 end of Sept 2024, so ca. 16 months of use and it sits at energy-full: 85.527 Wh energy-full-design: 85.0007 Wh
Although I only game with it and compile some software as load, rarely maxxing (the GPU is sometimes 85°C+). And have the FW sitting on an Ergostand III
