This is going to be a really long read, so bear with me!
Like @FWPL mentioned, I have gotten another batch of 5 boards produced and sent one to him.
I’ve been using the original board (and now, one from the new batch) on my 7940HS mainboard over the past 2 months without any hiccups with the signal quality. FWPL has a 7840HS, which should then cover the first gen of boards. Considering I haven’t had a single issue, it seems like a redriver will not be needed (I really did not want to have to add one either).
It does make sense that the signal is fine when taking the 4i adapter into account, since this board should theoretically interfere with the signal less than the extra connection required for the M.2 adapter.
If everything works fine on FWPL’s end, I’d like to find one or two more testers with the newer gen Ryzen AI mainboards in order to confirm the board works on the newer gen as well. So, if there are some people (ideally in the EU as I’m located in Germany) with the Ryzen AI mainboards that have an OCuLink 8i cable and the adapter, please do contact me if you’d like to get the dev board for testing (for a small cost + shipping).
OCuLink connector
For this batch of the boards, I have switched over to a through-hole OCuLink connector to add some strength. The connector has also been moved even further to the edge of the board in order to sit flush with an IO insert in the back. I have uploaded the step file for the cover onto the repository.
Better components (Thank you Framework Team!!!)
The new boards also feature soldered screw standoffs for the mounting screws and the official fan connectors thanks to Framework sending me some over.
The Framework Team has been a great help behind the scenes for this project, so I’d like to thank them here as well!
USB
The new boards should’ve featured a USB-A connector, but unfortunately it does not fit height-wise into the laptop, so it won’t be present on the final revision of the board.
I will leave the pads for whoever wants to solder something directly (like a logitech unifying receiver or a similar dongle).
Switches
There are also a couple of new components on the board. Mainly 2 different switches.
The left is used to switch between the PCIe reset signals on the OCuLink connector. This is used to switch between x8 and 2x4 configurations (It also requires flashing different firmware onto the board). I am not going to make any guarantees about 2x4 definitely working, but I’ll leave the feature in, in case someone wants to tinker with this in their homelab.
I did confirm it works with an OCuLink Y-cable that splits a single 8i to 2x 4i connections. I connected a Gen 4.0 M.2 drive to the first 4i connector and a GPU to the second 4i connector. Both of them worked without issues during the short test I did just to confirm the feature works at all.
The DIP switch on the right controls if the PCIe clock should always be kept on, or if it should be automatically turned on when a cable is connected (it requires the dock on the other end to short CPRSNT pin to GND). I do not know how much worse the power consumption of the laptop is when the PCIe clock is kept on with nothing connected, but I wanted to add this in case it helps. I did not test this feature as of yet, but should be able to in the next few days.
The AliExpress dock does not seem to have support for this behavior, so it will unfortunately be currently unused and require being switched to always on anyways.
3D Model for an adapter mount
While I was waiting on the boards, I created a simple 3D printable mount for the 8i adapter and a SFX power supply for anyone who’s going to be interested into this solution. It definitely needs some work, so I am looking forward to anyone who might do a remix of it. But it does the job for me right now.
The End
I might’ve missed to mention some things I did in the last few months with regards to this project, but I am happy that it is finally nearing finalization.
I do still need to decide on a platform to sell these on, or I might do a simple bank transfer / PayPal or whatever people prefer. I’d like to just recoup the funds I put into the dev boards, which means that I am planning to sell only a single batch of the boards in order to break even. The price will vary depending on the size of the batch (I am planning to do about 20 boards currently), but I do not see it costing more than ~40€ (+ shipping, which can vary greatly depending on the country).
I am unfortunately not going to be able to do anything regarding this project for about half a year starting from April as I’m temporarily going to be moving countries, which is why I do hope that testers will verify the design works, so that I can order a bigger production batch for the community and ship by mid-March at the latest.
