What port is that unit plugged into? usb c?
Yes, USB-C.
It seem like the Framework USB-C card have some issues regarding Thunderbolt (might be related with insufficient signal integrity). In that case, just plug it onto the one on the main board directly.
They have the right to remain silent and it’s best for them to do that right now because if they announce it after shipping out maybe 30K units that “all of your USB-C cards are bad and we would get you replacements”, that will have quite bad a negative impact on the overall perception of Framework and might as well kill it off altogether as it’s managing to stand up on its own.
TLDR
However this is also a very likely case based on how Thunderbolt is such a highly … I was going to say “volatile”, but the quality you need to have in the cables to pull off even a “dead-end” 4x PCIe adapter is quite steep. And anything longer than 50cm will also require active cables, which are priced like a ransom.
It is also known that things such as the PCB (commonly made from a material called FR4) have capacitance effect and other things, and throwing a additional pair of connector into the mix isn’t helping.
And this card might be why the cert is not passing because we know that MB is capable of doing TB (3, at least), we know that TB require very high signal quality, and we know trying to work with TB across a card isn’t working in any circumstance.
I am pretty open to having to do this tradeoff. It’s not as if anyone would bring a egpu with them, anyway. But I want Framework to admit that it’s the issue with the cards so we can rest assured buying things like replacement motherboard (or their devices), and so far they had been quiet on this matter.
HOWEVER, as posted by the @gs1 he is running it through a card. Perhaps he is using a good quality cable and/or because the physical small size of the “adapter card” he uses the route the signal have to physically travel between the two chip is shorter, the chip says “yes” and he get the beans.
@gs1 Would you be able to post some close up pictures of the R43SG-TB3/ share what the chip P/Ns are?
Im curious what Thunderbolt controller is used in it.
The last picture. It have a big black square (controller IC) on it.
There is a dot on it, but I do not know if there are any letters.
There should be letters, but the manufacturer can also have ground the letters away so you can’t copy the design.
Take a super clean close shot showing the letters on that IC.
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Here are the best quality macro images I can get of the ICs. The first image is flipped upside-down:
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Just a public thank you to @gs1 for privately providing me with some test cases for using X plane 11 on iGPU and this eGPu setup. Very thoroughly documented. Hope the screen shots and frame rate results get published for you all to see as well.
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The controller, as expected, is an Intel controller. A DSL6340.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/87401/intel-dsl6340-thunderbolt-3-controller/specifications.html
It is discontinued. Which is unsurprising. What is interesting is that it has a TDP of 1.7W (quite high, given that it’s really just a bridge chip)
And it cost … $9.74 each if you buy in batches of 1000. However, Mouser only have a stock of 47 and it didn’t show up on other places.
Not surprising, given the legendary ability of Shenzhen to stockpile legacy products (I even had some old Xbox one joystick modules Alps stopped making since 2014)
The bulk of manufacturing cost I would assume would actually be the PCB. The chip is extremely densely wired and require fabrication techniques such as “via in pad” and 4-layer (even 6 or more) PCBs with very tight tolerances. Imagine an entire PCIe x4 signal lane (as well as DP or HDMI and USB) on top of the USB-C signal all tucked into this 10.7mm * 10.7mm area.
I can’t see the details such as footprint, packaging (pin count, location, etc) because obviously:
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@RandomUser The BIOS update to 3.06 seems to have solved that for now. As the updates aren’t available in the LVFS yet, I had to pop in a Windows drive to update to that BIOS revision, and the unplug it. Plugging my CoolerMaster EG200 eGPU directly through the USB-C card I have on the top left port of the machine is how I’m usually connecting to the eGPU and things seem fine, especially with patched Power Delivery now.
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Is this setup TSA/travel-friendly?
Yes!
Just writing one more update here to mention I’m currently traveling with this eGPU setup, and it works flawlessly! I took it on a plane in carry-on luggage and the TSA officers at airport security didn’t give me a hard time over any of it, not even the giant Dell power brick.
The only catch is that you may need to replace the anti-static bags after a trip or two since the plastic seems to get damaged by the small, sharp components soldered to the boards. But the bags do a perfect job keeping everything protected though!
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I think it’s more important for the boards to be physically protected (e.g., the PCIe slot not to be bumping into other things) than for it to get anti-static protection since … well, yes, static can occur but on a PCB that does not connect to anything else it’s a lesser concern.
which is … you might want to 3D print a case for the adapter board and stupid nvme thing.
I think ADT link also have another one with the TB controller baked directly in to the PCIe board (slightly larger board), which is significantly less janky…
Well I can’t find it. BUT, I know this simple setup here (which is an illegally copied) Intel Thunderbolt 3 Evaluation Board (routed via ArtPCB) plugged into a PCIe adapter and a bracket fitted around.
All of those crude chinese “docks” are made in a small factory based in Shenzhen (who reverse-engineered the PCB) and I think the controller’s display name are something like “LT-link”.
Oh, it had this double-male … thingy. That’s jankier than I thought, but not terrible.
Aliexpress, of course.
And realistically, a more decent (but not overpriced) enclosure like Akitto node or Highpoint Rocketstor (6661a) isn’t ridiculously overpriced and for a few extra but you have a full enclosure as well as a slightly more reputable source of parts.
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I recently got my ADT-Link egpu adapter and it seems to work well, but if I have it plugged in and then turn on the laptop, the bitlocker screen pops up and asks me to put in my code to proceed. I can just turn on my PC and hook up the egpu afterwards, but I was wondering if there was a way to just keep it plugged in all the time. Should I just disable bitlocker?
wow.
Windows 11 have a bit of code that detect whether there were hardware changes (and decide whether it should ask you for the recovery code or not). Because when there are significant hardware changes it suspect that the harddrive was stolen (and put into another computer).
I did not expect it to be this harsh. I was expecting it to tie to like the motherboard, like the windows activation.
You can disable bitlocker. But you should not enter the recovery password because if you do so, windows might remember the state (with eGPU) as the "correct"config and if you power on without the eGPU it will also prompt you with the password because it detects that the original config (with eGPU) is no longer true.
Bitlocker is an incredibly niche thing (for data security) for in case your device is lost/stolen, as nobody can access the content in the encrypted drive. This does not prevent anyone from just erasing the disk and sell the computer second handed.
Depend on your perspective, I guess. If you only use your computer to play games and such, you might just need to change your account passwords (if you have them stored as a file on disk). However if you are, say, product manager at Framework, you might have sensitive info that might … well, cause bigger trouble. In that case bitlocker would be “handy”.
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will eGPU+pcie riser work without external monitor ?
depend.
Some GPU have the “display backfeed” support, some don’t.
Most modern cards support this (e.g. radeon RX 560, Nvidia GTX 1080 and upwards)
Radeon call this the “XConnect”, and you can find it here:
https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/xconnect
I remeber Nvidia have at least a name for it, but everyone seem to have forgot that, but here it is
https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4565/
Keep in mind that since the GPUs need to feed the frames back to the laptop, you have more performance drop (about 20%), and your frames won’t be particularly high. Games that optimize performance by loading all the assets into VRAM at once and then output frames have less performance drop (at high quality) but the frames won’t go as high.
Using external display connected to the eGPU can cut the performance loss as low as 5%
Apple have some extremely rudimentary support for Thunderbolt-attached GPUs feeding back, but don’t have issues going outwards. It might have improved over the years.
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I’m currently having a problem where my gpu doesn’t show up on my computer. (Using Fedora Linux) and I have the 2 green lights (marked as 3V and 12V) but I also have a red light(marked as RST).
Does anyone know what the issues is and what I can do to try to fix it?
Edit: This was mitigated by taking the gpu out of the pcie slot and reinserting it. It still sometimes does it for no apparent reason.
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Going to jump in on the only semi-live R43SG thread I can find. Has anyone managed to get suspend (either deep or s2idle) working with this board and an NVIDIA gpu? My GTX1650S works perfectly on this board with Windows, and my only issue in Linux is an inability to suspend and resume properly (the behavior is slightly different depending on various settings, but never functional in any capacity).
Hello! I do have suspend issues on Linux regardless of whether I have an eGPU connected or now. If I recall correctly it’s an issue with how 11th gen Intel CPUs handle sleep states, and not much can be done about it other than hoping the 12th gen mainboard addresses this. Personally I’m going to just live with disabling all forms of suspend on Linux and fully shutting-down my PC until I try again with a mainboard upgrade. Oh Intel…