Low Power Delivery Framework Charger?

Community Support
1

Has anyone ever had issues with the Framework brand charger?

In the past few months I had a bunch of issues with my Framework laptop (12th Gen i5 on Windows 11). First my eGPU (Razer Core X) just stopped working. It would briefly power on but then turn off. I thought maybe the Power Supply in the eGPU was busted perhaps.

Then I started having crazy FPS drops while playing League of Legends, as though I was playing on battery and not plugged in. I use a second monitor and connected to that through an Anker USB-C hub with HDMI. I also had another dongle with my keyboard, mouse and headset plugged in. I noticed that the battery would drain a few percent every hour even when the laptop was plugged in. I finally tried my partner’s laptop charger, just a generic 65w and things are working! I plugged my eGPU and it powered up like nothing was wrong and is working fine now.

Wondering if I have a bad charger? Or does it just not provide enough power to run everything I need? Is there any software that I can view the live charging rate to compare what I am receiving when I use my Framework charger vs. something different?

2

Maybe as it can only provide 60W and there are times without all you periferals my laptop draws 64W monetarily.

Still it could be duff power unit. Unless you monitor the power it draws and how much the laptop uses, you will never really know.

3

What is strange is that the problem has increased over the past few months. I got the laptop 11/2022 and things worked great, with the eGPU and all that. Then starting a couple months ago problems started showing and then issue has continued to get worse. I even had issues a few weeks ago when the laptop completely died while plugged in. Like it was not receiving a charge at all.

Is there any way to monitor power draw?

4

Not without two inline meters, one to measure the input to the adapter and one out to the laptop to find the efficiency.

You can monitor the laptops use via apps.

5

Step 1 with Windows eGPUs is to disable Link State Power Management in your power plan. It’s a hidden setting by default.
Try plugging your second monitor into your eGPU instead, you’ll get better performance and it won’t cause issues with power draw. TB3 devices have the ability to pull ~80W (don’t quote me on that number) from the host, and it will do so if it doesn’t get enough from its own PSU.
I have no experience with diagnosing desktop PSUs, but you might want to check how your Core X is holding up or use a gpu dashboard from your vendor (my eGPU is MSI, so I use Afterburner) to look at how much power it draws at times.

For my setup, I have a Dell DA-2 on my egpu (gtx1650s) that provides more than enough for it (220w), and a Razer TB4 hub with PD from its included barrel jack through the tb4 cable. My second monitor is plugged into the eGPU, and I use it as the primary with my internal as the secondary. No issues with power. Before I got the TB4 hub, I used a generic 65W charger from Amazon and had no issues there. I actually haven’t run it in a desktop configuration with the Framework brick since I leave that in my bag for travel due to its smaller size.

6

If it is the power supply, it could be that it has been slowly degrading and leading to more problems over time. I’ve seen a bad power supply make all sorts of weird things happen. If your Framework is running fine on another charger, that’s a pretty good sign. How about trying your suspect Framework charger on your partner’s PC? Anything weird happen?