I found out that even if you have the expansion storage plugged into the device and not doing reading or writing onto it, it still gets quite warm. Also I don’t find a way to read the temperature of it. I saw the screenshots you could read in Windows (via a smart reader programm). Tried via smartctl and via sensors. No sensor went away when I unplugged it and hddparm says it doesn’t have a temp sensor.
Is there a way to fix this? Is really annoying getting this part getting warm/hot, when it doesn’t need to be. Seems to be the same even when the Expansion Storage is not even mounted.
Mine is fairly new and should have one, right? And wouldn’t really solve the problem. My problem isn’t thermal throttling, but wanting the bottom side of the Laptop to not get that warm (Framework 13 AMD being relatively cool and quite, if not charged fast or so, btw), more cool more comfortable. If this thing gets so warm I could use an USB stick and unplug it when not in use, but I purchased it so can have it in the Laptop when I use it and not dangling on the side.
The thing is it gets warm at all if not being even mounted or read/written from. It seems to take a lot power and doesn’t really and idle mode, like SSDs normally have. Maybe a Linux/Fedora problem or a firmware problem.
Should be fairly easy to recreate.
I could try being in the BIOS for half am hour and see if has the same effect, that would mean it’s a firmware issue, probably.
Not that comfortable to have it in and getting warm without being used.
And the temperature sensor thing, is another issue, but not of that much importance. Maybe it is because I have a 250 GB and not 1TB, but at least the 1TB seems to show a temperature reading in Windows, as you can see here:
I’ve noticed a similar issue on Arch with a 1TB. Tried setting some udev rules to sleep it when not being used. Still gets very hot just being plugged in, whether it’s mounted or not. And Yeah I opened it up and made sure mine was one with a thermal pad, it has one.
@Framework I checked and let my Framework run the last night only sitting in BIOS and it still got hot, so it should be a firmware issue. Yes the Storage Expansion is bootable, but I just sat in the BIOS settings top page. Could you please look into this issue, as it should be the same in Windows/Linux if it happens in the BIOS. Thanks in advance
No, I haven’t tried, but I think my expansion card should come already with one and it even gets hot just sitting a whole night in BIOS, so no write/read happening, no linux error can result in this, as it is just BIOS, so it is a firmware issue or so.
Same issue here, I have the 1tb expansion card plugged in and not mounted in Linux, and it gets concerningly hot. Not sure how to measure power draw and temperature, but I feel like it should be completely idle until mounted.
hm … i am adding another oberservation … i have the same issue with a standard USB stick. although no data is transfered it gets very hot. same stick on my leneovo … no problems.
But i use NIXOS un FW16 and Win10 on leneovo
Adding in my $0.02 here, I have the new Framework 13" with a Ryzen 340 and a 2nd gen 1TB expansion storage module. I can confirm the 2nd gen also seems to be getting rather warm. I wouldn’t say hot but definitely warm, even if I’m not doing anything with it. The main body of the laptop stays quite cool when I select the Power Save profile on my battery widget (I’m using Linux Mint so I’m not sure what it might be doing under the covers when I set that, but it works). The store module is, by far, the warmest part of the laptop.
I’ve got the same issue with a branch new 250GB expansion on framework 12. It’s warm when unmounted and using a lot of power, meaning I can’t really leave it in there when I’m not using it.
The storage expansion card’s topology is like a normal 2230 SSD in a USB-C SSD enclosure. This makes it draw significant power and emit heat even when not using. I don’t have a storage expansion card but according to my use of SSD enclosure, it matches the description of the problem.
Just for those who might come across this in the future (as I did) and are simply looking to confirm how to read SMART from their framework USB storage expansion devices, it looks like at least the 2nd gen 1TB units are using asmedia chipsets - so to check smart, you’d just run:
sudo smartctl -d sntasmedia -a /dev/sda
Should give you something akin to the following if successful:
smartctl 7.4 2023-08-01 r5530 [x86_64-linux-6.17.0-14-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-23, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Number: 1TB Expansion Card
Serial Number: REDACTED
Firmware Version: UHFM30.4
PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID: 0x0000
IEEE OUI Identifier: 0x000000
Controller ID: 0
NVMe Version: <1.2
Number of Namespaces: 0
Local Time is: Sun Mar 1 10:56:34 2026 CST
Firmware Updates (0x00): 0 Slots
Supported Power States
St Op Max Active Idle RL RT WL WT Ent_Lat Ex_Lat
0 + 0.00W - - 0 0 0 0 0 0
=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 62 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 50%
Percentage Used: 0%
Data Units Read: 101,729 [52.0 GB]
Data Units Written: 59,547 [30.4 GB]
Host Read Commands: 0
Host Write Commands: 0
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 46
Power On Hours: 11
Unsafe Shutdowns: 44
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0
And for sure, they definitely generate more heat than their share’s worth lol
