No you can not fit any GPU inside. There is a review on Reddit about it. It can fit for sure an OCuLink card but we do not know if it will work with a dGPU first we heard from Minisforum is that not likely at the moment may require BIOS update. The connector is x16 standard PCIe but it has x4 lanes available which is enough for OCuLink, but the story about BIOS is concerning. Also there is no confirmation that they did test the TB5 ports with a TB5 dGPU dock, so again we do not know if require again BIOS changes, which may or may not come. Looks like some units are out to reviewers, does not look bad in general but nobody was interested to see if supports or not and external dGPU, most do not need one. They were left with only 1x PCI for the second NVMe but if you do not need OCuLink the internal PCIe supports an NVMe 4x adaptor, and this was tested and works OK so you could have in fact 3 NVMe but one is 1800 Mb/s, but two are full speed. The TB5 controller they use is confirmed to be Intel JHL9480 so the same as most TB5 eGPU docks out there but again we do not have any confirmation that they tested and that works with an eGPU. We could not even confirm that it works with the dock they build which is a standard USB4 one. It has 2 x 10Gb/s Realtek ethernet ports, the driver is in mainline Linux from kernel 6.16 and up, and it is confirmed that works once you update the kernel. Did not hear any complains about not working in Windows.
Some initial reviews complained about fan noise in performance mode, looks like they already released a new BIOS with improvements, they can control the fans in BIOS. I do not think anybody really tested how much the new BIOS improve the noise but is good that they were fast to at least try to fix it.
If I hear anything new, I will update here also, I’m keeping an eye on it, once a few things get clarified. I do have a Minisforum system, more than 3 years old and never had any problems with it, so depends of luck.
I do not need an eGPU now but I would like to have the option, I read about progress in this forum for using hybrid LLMs iGPU + dGPU working together so I would like to have the option in the future. The system looks very promising, if all things will work as supposed to.
I have a feeling will be the same with Minisforum pc if using an OCuLink adaptor, looks like the problem may come deep from Agesa. Probably the BIOS does not consider NVidia as a “gpu” at that level this is why passes some of initialization and AMD dGPU does not. This probably only AMD can fix. But it may work on Minisforum with the TB5 port and an eGPU dock, who knows. They start shipping units to reviewers but is just standard talk, no reviewer is interested in these kind of testing, is yet again all the general AI 395 stuff, same as with every other model.
The Framework is still very new so it’s going to take a while for the edge and corner case evaluations to come out. That said: Wendell from Level 1 Techs already mentioned running an nVidia GPU over USB4 or Occulink in his original review, mentioned here:
So you’re not alone, it’s just going to take longer to build up the knowledge base for this kind of use and may take a while to work the way we’d like to see long term.
Can someone help me understand, beyond the marketing, what “Thunderbolt ready” really means, please?
Intel markets “Thunderbolt Ready” as a motherboard that is compatible with their JHL9580 TB5 chip. These boards can, apparently, take a 4x thunderbolt 5 card with JHL9580 and tunnel double the 40Gbs of TB4 or USB4 V1
Then alongs come the MS-S1 with a few of these Barlow Ridge JHL9580 chips and it’s USB 4 V2 and it’s (untested) 80Gbs.
What does “Ready” actually mean? Is it possible to simply add a TB5 card into the Desktop x4 PCIe slot to achieve USB4 V2 throughput?
I think the controller is JHL9840 this is what Minisforum is using, this is what I found about:
Also from what I read is using 4x PCIe lanes so the data connection can not be more than that so 64 Gbs, 80Gbs is for video in DP Alt mode they do some compression or encoding for that. But anyway 64Gbs is twice as much as TB4/USB4 and on par with OCuLink. In fact it will be a little bit under because some overhead from what I read is 95% of OCuLink which is not bad.
Interesting, this is what a reviewer with a unit found, probably reported by Windows drivers. What is the difference between the two ?
Found this, still not clear, appears that 40 is a quad and 50 is dual.
Anyway Minisforum specify 2 x USB4V2. Maybe is just a Windows reporting error they look pretty similar. Or maybe they are pin to pin compatible and Minisforum used both on the sample units they send out.
From the tables TB5-TB5 results are close to that 95% of OCuLink with some games better than other. Anyway, for local LLMs using the dGPU for hybrid work I doubt that the difference is even visible.
If you do the math - TB5-TB5 ext vs. OCuLink ext - only the Timespy Extreme score has <5% difference. But looking at the other (ext) results, Timespy Extreme seems almost completely invariant on bandwidth.
For everything else tested we’re looking at 5.5-8% difference with a whopping 25% diff in Aida mem write.
Personally, TB5 is a no go for me when compared to OCuLink because I like to use the “int” variant which seems to work way better with OCuLink than with TB5. Plugging the display (or display dummy) to the iGPU allows the dGPU to enter d3cold when unused and drain close to zero power.
For now Minisforum has the same problem like the Framework when trying to use an AMD dGPU on the PCIe slot. Pretty sure will be the same with the OCuLink. Probably an NVidia will work but nobody did test yet, again probably similar to Framework. But TB5 port works.
Yes, the M2 module uses 1 x PCIe for WIFI and 1 xUSB3.0 for BT. Anyway, for the Minisforum pc, they have left 4x PCIe lanes available on the connector. But the second NVMe was left with only 1x PCIe lane, its on specs. All other lanes are used, they need some for the TB5 controller also. There are already units out for reviewers, looks good. Expected general shipping to start by the end of October.
