If you were to do this, would it just be the PCB, or would you be modifying the expansion bays with the modules?
Pcb with soldering only, installing in the bay is too easy. Will try to calculate projected cost first to scope potential interest. Thinking about a Kickstarter campaign…
no, seriously no. absolute waste of time unless it will be going alongside something larger.
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Josh, thank you so much for doing this!
Do you have any source where I can see the module or is it just this thread?
And how can we pay? 
Neat project 
Next year TB5 Barlow Ridge arrives and the world at large will quickly shift to / add that on newer mainboards, or maybe as a 4x pcie gen5 card (watch the MiniPC market with gen5 nvme slot lose its mind if you can throw a BR controller onto an nvme card)… tb5 egpu will appear immediately… but oculink for those wanting that little bit extra out of what they have now would be great 
Would be nice but I’ll believe it when I see it. With all previous thunderbolt generations, adoption took quite a while and this time you don’t even have the apple market driving development of peripherals.
Pretty sure that didn’t get any easier and no one did that with any of the previous generations. TB add-in cards were pretty niche and required a lot of main-board support and stuff.
I really do admire your optimism, hope your are right and intel is a bit easier to work with this time around so smaller manufacturers can make actual custom designs and not just have to repackage some reference designs.
I believe tb5 when I see it. 10 year wait somehow diminished my optimism.
It was demo-ed in the flesh on a consumer grade laptop, obv a prototype and not yet on sale.
Granted, Intel did make it official for “2024”: Intel makes Thunderbolt 5 official, promising speeds of up to 120Gbps - The Verge
But just not sure I want to wait again for the new Razer Core X and buy all new tech that supports it - sounds like a longer wait and more expensive than oculink.
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@Josh_Cook @Seneral Hi all, I just wanted to ask if anyone is still pursuing this? It may be that tb5 has cancelled these projects, so just wanted to ask if there is still any timeline? Thank you!
yea, im still working on it.
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Thanks for the update! Would love to have more info, in due course, on this project and for now all the best for it!
Since I trust Josh will have a good solution, I haven’t put too much time into my version. Especially since most of that time went into fixing Kicad to make it easier to design 6 layer boards, not into the actual board design. I’ve decided to circumvent the remaining Kicad issues I was facing rather than try to fix them all, so I’ll be working on the new 6-layer board soon. After that I’ll be able to check if it works and is safe (even if it has some limitations on cable length). Only then I’d see if it’s worth incorporating other design elements (e.g. USB hub), if I want to do a small production run, etc.
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Looks like Oculink adoption continues to grow for eGPU usage: MINISFORUM's mini PC with a 70W Ryzen 7 7840HS chip and 63 Gbps Oculink port now available for $479 and up - Liliputing
Some pretty refined community projects as well: "OGRE-250" .67L OCuLink eGpu module, using HDPlex GAN 250w | SFF.Network
There’s also this really interesting product (caution, auto-play audio on the page): 壹刻坞 - 雷电/OCulink双接口显卡坞
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Yes, I ordered the One Dock v2 a couple of months ago for in all honesty the single reason of this thread here and the projects of @Josh_Cook as well as @Seneral. That’s literally the reason why I have now committed to oculink.
But I wanted to ask an honest question here that I have been thinking about. So, provided that Josh and Seneral will need a bit of time (no pressure intended), I have been thinking about using oculink via the ssd connection (it’s pcie 4.0). So my plan was to buy the small 2230 ssd and to run windows from it, and then use the 2280 ssd connection for oculink with the one dock. Judging from the Verge review and the Dave2D video the FW16 should be quite well suited for this use, correct? What I would do is to remove the top and the screws to free the laptop, and I would then insert the oculink ssd connector. So the notebook would still turn on as power button is located on top right.
Let me know if I am missing anything here, but I guess it should work. Better than cutting a whole in the back as with other laptops. And yes, this is an interim “desktop” solution until Josh or Seneral are finished.
PS: I asked Handtalker on Discord who produces the One Dock v2, he is doing a couple of projects for custom oculink connectors for different products, but he has no plans for the FW16. So it’s up to this thread here (or Framework ;)).
I think so. Here is a screenshot from Dave2D’s video showing the laptop with the input deck removed. It should work, although may require changing BIOS settings (IIRC the default behavior is to shut down when the laptop is open so you wont cause issues by swapping components while accidentally forgetting the system is on).
Another possibility is that there is also a dual SSD 2280 expansion module board coming soon. IIRC that will slot into the expansion bay shell (the shell has an empty area for things like adding a dual SSD card). Since the shell also has a removable piece at the back (in case you got a card with read I/O) you could put an M.2 to OcuLink adapter in there and route it through the back. Kinda like a significantly less elegant version of what some people are working on here.
Although we don’t know when the dual 2280 card is coming out or how much it will cost. The Verge reported that it’s coming “later this year,” although as far as I can tell Framework’s only official statement has been that the Framework 16 will have “the ability to add two more in the Expansion Bay for colossal storage capacity.” Framework has shared the schematics for this module on GitHub.
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Thank you for the feedback. Ah yes, I forgot the dual SSD expansion module plans and the fact that there is actually an empty area intentionally at the back. Decision made, oculink it is (hopefully with a solution from the community which would be necessary to get away from a DIY desktop situation of course as I don’t think swapping out expansion bay daily is a real solution either).
When the dual SSD expansion bay module gets made, I hope that Framework or someone else could also work on an adapter similar to the one used in the new minisforum mini PC (EliteMini UM780 XTX Ryzen 7 7840HS processor Mini PC – Minisforum). It would solve the issue for those buying the expansion bay module and should hopefully not cost too much in development/be feasible to develop.
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Hey all, I have an honest question to pick the brain of the community: So, in a lot of fora on egpus that I am following people keep mentioning that there are oculink egpus available on Amazon that allow for 63Gbps PCIe x4 4.0 speeds via M.2 NVMe.
And often I think this one is mentioned for that: https://www.amazon.de/chenyang-Oculink-SFF-8612-SFF-8611-Grafikkarte/dp/B0BZW1G87R/ref=sr_1_2?__mk_de_DE=ÅMÅŽÕÑ&crid=2FNE4PWJYRBHI&keywords=oculink%2Begpu&qid=1700838610&sprefix=oculink%2Begpu%2Caps%2C78&sr=8-2&th=1
However, on Amazon it says it is only PCIE 3.0… So my questions are: is this egpu actually one with which you can achieve PCIE 4.0 speeds? And if not, do you know of any on Amazon? Thanks!