IMO the fact that Asus was able to cram a 100-125W vapor chamber cooling system inside a pretty slim ROG Zephrus G14 for a CPU and GPU independent of one another seems like it would be very possible to fit a similar cooling solution within 2/3rds the space of a 16-inch chassis that is almost 60% longer, 10% wider, and 15% thicker.
And recent Nvidia cards can maintain 90% performance at 65-70% the stock TDP – for the 4060TI that means 3060TI performance at 122 watts.
Also mobile CPUs like the Core i9-13980HX (55W TDP, 8 “P-cores” + 16 “E-cores”) and the Ryzen 9 7945HX3D (45-75W configurable TDP, 16 “P-cores”) exist that boost up to 155 watts of power draw and can maintain around half that wattage in games.
So given 25% less CPU cores and at least 20% IPC efficiency boost on 4nm (30% less power draw compared to 16 Zen4 cores) as well as another 30% boost in GPU efficiency from 5nm to 4nm (RX 6750XT grunt @ ~90W) AMD could manage a 55W TDP APU with a 12-core/24-thread Zen5 CPU + 40CU RDNA 3.5 integrated GPU that peaks at 110 watts with 20-80 (50W average) dynamically allocated to the CPU and the other 30-90 (60W average) dynamically allocated to the iGPU when gaming.
So assuming iGPU performance scales somewhat linearly it could match the RX 6750XT at 90W, the RX 5700 at 60W, and the RX 470 at 30W while accessing up to 48GB of DDR5-6400/7200 – half of 96GB max system RAM – as VRAM.
I’m trying to be moderately conservative with these power efficiency and performance estimates but I honestly believe we could see this amount of processing power packed into a moderately large modular laptop like a Generation 2 Framework 16.
Well I bet there’s a 50-50 chance we could get a 10% bump up in the standard battery capacity from 85Wh to 93.5Wh or at least an option to configure a larger main battery for Generation 2 kinda like what we saw happen for the Framework 13.
And a 45Wh battery could definitely fill the volume where the RX 7700S is crammed into right now inside the current “thicker” expansion bay and probably a 61Wh one too with the expansion bay fans removed.
Here’s hoping for larger capacity main battery, but a 45-61Wh expansion bay battery for a potential grand total of 130-154.5Wh would be sick AF.
Would totally have to pack the expansion bay battery in a convenient corner inside a carry-on luggage to pass airport security though before slotting it into the laptop mid-flight…at least until non-flammable solid state batteries arrive in 5 years.
I think I can settle for reducing battery drain on an international flight with a super compact 90W+ PD charger and serviceable StarLink inflight Wi-Fi internet though