[RESPONDED] AMD Batch 1 Guild

Well, that’s another problem. The “administer secureboot” menu on the 13th Gen core/Ryzen machines pre-suppose that you didn’t have any non-secureboot media attached to the machine, or else it’ll require the end user to power the machine off, remove the media, navigate to the menu, turn it off, wait for the memory training to happen, then power it back up again and go through the rigamarole. For 96GB of RAM the process can take 15-20 minutes per power-on. This seems like one of those “this needs to be documented on day 1” situations.

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I found that I did not have to do any of this, I just used F2 (The bios key as documented) to get to the menu before it could try to load from my ssd, then I was able to disable secure boot without removing any boot media. Maybe since I have a battery connected, the RAM training was only for the first boot, but if you keep tapping F2 while booting, it should work.

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Okay, but did you start with the Ryzen board in the FW13 laptop chassis first, or the Coolermaster case? With the board installed in the FW13 laptop chassis you will not have the red/blue blinkies, and the machine will work just fine. The RAM training will take a bit but it’ll boot up within 5 minutes or so, even with 96GB of DDR5-5600. The standalone mode issue will not matter, the machine will have a working display (since it’s on the built-in eDP port) and you would be able to bypass any boot issue by holding F12 to select the device, or yeah, hit F2 to go to the BIOS screen.

However, if you start on the Coolermaster case, you will get the red/blue blink storm, often for a while until “something” works itself out, and then it’ll be possible to get the stable white LED and power it up (which it manage to do 40% of the time - maybe it has to do with the fact that I had standalone mode turned ON and standalone mode detection turned OFF the first time I swapped the board on my FW13 from the current Alder Lake to the Phoenix Ryzen just to attempt to figure out WTF happened). Otherwise, you can attach a USB keyboard onto it and you can keep hitting F2 or F12, it won’t do anything whatsoever.

So generally, here’s what you’ll need to do if you bought the Ryzen FW13 board and only plan to run it standalone (on a Cooler Master case), and you are without an FW13 laptop chassis:

a) If you don’t plan to run/install anything with a Secureboot shim pre-baked (i.e. any of the BSDs, VMWare ESXi, XCP-ng (which is based on old Citrix tech) or Proxmox 7.x which is based on Debian 11), make sure that you don’t have the install media connected to the machine OR the OS pre-installed the content of the SSD, or it’ll never boot. In fact, I would not even put an NVMe drive onto the slot and use the smallest slowest RAM you have at your disposal (I dunno, borrow some DDR5-4800 8GB SODIMMs from a local IT shop?) so the training will not take as long.

b) Mount it into the Coolermaster case, and put the case cover back on. Or if you are particularly brave, tape the chassis opening switch down with Gaffer’s tape and run it bareback. Your call.

c) Grab a USB-PD cable/power source to the front left USB-C expansion module (if you lay the board flat with the writing right-side-up, it’s the one on the left side closest to you), put the USB-A module on the front right for the keyboard (if you have one), and use the front right for HDMI or Displayport module output. Plug it in and feed it power. It should start the red/blue blink storm for the next 5-10 minutes. I’ve had it storm for at least 30 minutes with 96GB of RAM. Then eventually it’ll power up and go white. Maybe it’s RAM training, perhaps it’s something else - The board thinks it’s cosplaying one of those LAPD spinners from Blade Runner. Or maybe I should put on some psytrance and let it enjoy its mini-rave.

c) Once it fires up, it’ll report no valid boot devices and go directly onto the main setup screen when the error was acknowledged. It’ll then go into an Insyde H2O BIOS screen. One of the option is to disable Secureboot enforcement. Do that first (the option is disallowed if you have a non-Secureboot boot device and you tried to boot off it), and then it should restart itself. The restart should be much faster and you should not see the red/blue blink storm.
Then you can go to setup and turn on Standalone mode, save and restart. Verify that standalone mode is turned off. Do not remove power since the red/blue storm will come back. Note that you will NOT need to turn off Secureboot if you are going to a sufficiently modern OS, like Win10/11, Debian 12, latest Ubuntu/Fedora releases, etc, or if you wish, figure out how to boot-shim FreeBSD via Microsoft’s secureboot key and Hashtool.

d) Once this happens, install whatever you need. Once you get to this stage the board should be reliable enough for standalone use with the Cooler Master case. Note that by spamming F2 repeatedly later on, you should be able to get Secureboot turned back on (do this at your own risk).

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Where did you buy it? Perhaps a link if available. Hoping one of you is European so I can get it from the same place.

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Got it from this Amazon seller in the US. From my brief look at amazon.de, good chance you can get it in the EU too, though the price was a bit steep.

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I ordered some from Moddiy. I believe they are in Europe, so you should be good. Not the cheapest place, but they claim all their products are genuine. Hard to be sure with some of the sellers on Amazon and elsewhere.

The European Amazon mentioned that we can’t ship to our location…

I noticed that but they didn’t have a picture. Did you order this one?

@Arjun_Swamy @LeeNeighoff What are the physical dimensions of the CPU / contact surface, by the way? There don’t seem to be datasheets or design drawings or anything available, neither on the AMD nor on the Framework side. I can make a rough guess based on the Framework-provided footprints for the mainboard, but it’s probably easier to just ask :slight_smile:

Yup, that’s the one. I haven’t used it yet, but I have it ready to go, lol.

I didn’t measure when I was applying as I basically just cut a close enough piece and trimmed til it was a similar size to the die. But, based on my leftover sheet of ptm7950, its around 17.5mm x 13mm.

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Not sure how trustworthy it is as it seems to be shipped from Hong Kong. For all I know the product is the same as some fake Aliexpress kind.

From what I understand, it is manufactured by Honeywell in China or Hong Kong. It is only sold by them in bulk, so any seller of it is either buying in bulk then selling pieces to individuals, or buying from someone else who has done that and then re-selling. I can’t offer anything other than the fact that I’ve read multiple places that Moddiy is a reliable place to get genuine PTM 7950 and they specifically say on their site that products they sell are genuine. I have no way to personally verify that.

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That’s the listing I purchased from as well.

Didn’t measure either, but I can eyeball based on my remaining pad. It was maybe a 2:1 ratio for length to width. I’ll check when I get home today.

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A bit of a side question but has anyone looked in to what DAC chip is used in the framework laptop and for the audio expansion card? I would assume they are the same in both cases. I was looking around online but can’t find at lot of info about it

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AMD and early runs of 11th Gen Intel 13s are supposed to use the Realtek ALC295, and the rest of Intel ones used the Tempo 92HD95B for availability reasons; I don’t know what they use on the 16s or on the expansion card, though.

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Thanks for that. That’s is super useful information

I wonder if someone could give me an advice regarding RAM.
Regarding availability I got 2 RAM options:

  • ADATA DIMM 64 GB DDR5-5600 (2x 32 GB) Dual-Kit, Arbeitsspeicher (schwarz, AX5U5600C3632G-DCLABK, Lancer, INTEL XMP)
  • Kingston FURY SO-DIMM 64 GB DDR5-5600 (2x 32 GB) Dual-Kit, Arbeitsspeicher (schwarz, KF556S40IBK2-64, Impact)
    Reading this thread, there had been issues with Crucial. So I’m not considering them.
    thx

The Kingston RAM you mentioned has been confirmed to work by multiple users, but I haven’t heard anything about that specific ADATA RAM.

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Glad to be on board the hype train! :partying_face:

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If I’m not totally wrong, that looks like a full size DIMM module and will not fit into the laptop. You need SO-DIMM. However if you want to get ADATA RAM, the official Framework modules are from them.