Will the Expansion Bay support a standard (desktop) full length PCIe x16 slot ?
Looking at 171 x 120.8 x 21.6 mm…
If so I hope the mobo will support PCIe bifurcation, ideally x16 into x4/x4/x4/x4 , or at least x8 into x4/x4
I will want if possible, to use IcyDock’s ToughArmor MB842MP-B ,
which lets you swap 2x M.2 NVMe SSDs without opening the case.
Any feedback welcome
including other ways to accomplish this goal.
The bay has 8 lanes of PCIe connectivity. The laptop does seem to support bifurcation (to 4x/4x), since Framework has open-sourced a dual M.2 SSD module for the expansion bay, and it does not need a PCIe switch.
Electrically, it has 8 PCIe lanes, but of course not a standard x8 or x16 physical slot.
Electrically, that’s probably compatible, but of course it won’t fit inside the expansion module slot… You’d need an adapter plus an external case or something like that. Or just get the framework dual SSD module (which probably doesn’t have hotswap, though).