Thanks, I just opened a ticket. Just to confirm though, that is a temporary fix, right? Eventually I’ll still need the hotfix fake battery or another replacement real battery in another ~1.5 years?
Rework Instructions for 11th Gen Mainboards to enable powering the RTC circuit from the main battery
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Yes, but as long as you are charging the laptop regularly (ideally at least once a week), it should last quite a while. The cell primarily degrades from being deep-cycled below its rated minimum voltage. Framework support will continue to offer free replacements as-needed as long as they can still source them.
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Best and quicker to just order a couple yourself.
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I will when needed - strangely I’ve only had to replace it once - but I don’t leave it plugged in at night - but use it most days - maybe that is enough to charge it
Yep, thats exactly what I was debating this afternoon. For the spectators out there, if you want to save $5 on the button battery, Framework support will ask you to disconnect your main battery which framework themselves describe in red letters as “very easy to accidently bend the pins” and in bold letters “Because the Battery connector is sensitive, we strongly recommend not disconnecting it unless one of the Framework Guides requires that”.
These kinds of hoops are par for the course with framework support and frankly I do not think customers should have to risk damaging their $700 motherboard to get a $5 battery when the only reason we’re in this mess is framework’s mistake.
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Once again, this is not FWs mistake, but Intel because they did not notify FW of the issue till units got out to customers and they started reporting issues, it also was not picked up in any testing by FW and has been rectified in newer mainboards.
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Regardless, we both agree it is NOT the customer’s fault and yet we’re the ones bearing the risk.
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It may or may not be Framework’s mistake (that the RTC battery drains too much and gets overdischarged is a different problem to the stuck CPU issue), but I hope we can all agree that the seller is responsible for the product quality and has to fix the issue. (If and how Framework gets compensation from Intel for delivering buggy CPUs is solely their problem.)
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I’ll admit that this thread has gotten VERY off topic, but the thread you posted this in is instructions on how to fix this issue. They even have created and are currently beta testing an even simpler version of said solution. Framework has provided customers with a solution.
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Yeah, can we =please= not start debating who is responsible and what the ethical obligations are again? Another thread was closed because we talked about this endlessly for months. This is just supposed to be specifically a technical discussion about the permanent solution as it develops.
Thanks in advance on behalf of everyone!
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The hopefully final revision is currently inbound as soon as DHL can figure out how to reach our office. We also handed out a few of the pre-production modules during LTX over the weekend.
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That was fast. We received the latest rev today, and it fits well. We are writing up a guide for this now and also drafting the service related instructions for how to get the module.
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nrp
Good to hear, kindly make the instructions detailed for those of up who have never soldered anything before. Am looking at soldering kits for electronics on Amazon, but no expertise here.
tks,
Nick
That’s great, I’ll be ordering as soon as it is available. I’ll dust off my soldering iron…
I’m just going to say, if you need instructions/guidance on how to solder in general, this isn’t for you, while the components aren’t tiny, they are still quite small and will seem tiny to anyone new to soldering, I really don’t want to see ripped pads, and also if your laptop is still in warranty and you attempt this repair and it causes further damage, support will likely not help.
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This is correct. This is relatively straightforward soldering job, with just a single wire being soldered to a single point. However, it’s a soldering job on a multi hundred dollar item, which isn’t a great project to learn how to solder on. There are a lot of great low cost kits that you can use to learn how solder with, and then once you have practice, you can try something like this. In the meantime, we would recommend bringing it to a friend or a local repair shop to do it.
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Nrp and Josh,
When my motherboard failed, I sent my laptop back gratis. I expect no less this time around. The point is, there was a defect in what I bought and Framework did the right thing and fixed it. No difference this time around. The soldering iron I see talked about here is 40 bucks at Amazon. Shipping back to Framework to let them do the work is a cost I am willing to endure if they will do the work and ship the fixed laptop back to me at their cost. In other words, a wash.
FWIW, I was an early supporter of Framework, so the warranty is null and void at this point in time.
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The step by step guide is available here: https://guides.frame.work/Guide/RTC+Battery+Substitution+on+11th+Gen+Intel®+Core™/203
Note that this guide covers what to solder, but not how to solder. We would again recommend practicing the how of soldering on low cost project PCBs before soldering on a Mainboard.
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Shows 403 Forbidden Access.
Made an account, and it’s still 403 for me.
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Ah, thanks for the heads up. I had to switch the guide to Public.
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