The Framework Ryzen 7040 USB ports are so broken I have stopped using the laptop

Community Support
, ,
1

I mostly stopped using this computer due to these insane, bizarre, unsolvable problems ages ago, but I am going to make one last attempt to try and figure out what’s causing them before I pull the plug and sell the laptop.

I have a Ryzen 7 7840U Framework Laptop 13. It has 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and is running Bazzite. Since I acquired this computer, I have been plagued by increasingly miserable issues pertaining to the core laptop feature, the expansion card system. Namely, that the USB ports are broken in new, creative, inscrutable, and sanity-depriving ways.

The port asymmetry problem was defined from the outset. If you plug a USB-A port in the wrong place, it eats your battery. You can’t do display out on front left. No Thunderbolt on front right. Frankly, this becomes a much bigger issue the longer you use the computer because you start to realize the core idea behind the Expansion Card system, the idea that you can have ports where you want them, is overly optimistic.

The battery life of the Framework Ryzen is already very poor. Some of the Expansion Cards eat your battery, taking it from 4 hours to maybe 2. I learned this the hard way when I made the mistake of thinking I could have a MicroSD card slot in the computer with configurable ports. Oops, in reality, I have to keep that stowed, which makes it a glorified dongle.

The computer dies in roughly two days from sleep mode drain anyway, so it’s really best to use plugged in at all times.

Which brings us to the real stinker-- USB-C docks. Namely, that every single one I have tried is broken on this computer.

The Dell K17A USB-C dock does not work.

The Dell K16A Thunderbolt dock does not work.

The ThinkPad USB-C Gen 2 dock does not work. (It has been too long since I tried these, so I do not remember how exactly they are broken.)

My primary dock, the ThinkPad Thunderbolt Workstation Dock Gen 2, the one I have plugged in to every other computer I own for the last six years with zero issues, works, sort of, partially, maybe, depending on the moon and stars. Let me explain more:

Today, when I plugged in the dock to each of the four ports, this happened:

  • Regardless of the port, the dock will only respond in ONE ORIENTATION of the cord. Yes. Really. This happens regardless of the cord used. Otherwise it flickers back and forth between “connected” and “not connected” messages multiple times per second.
  • The back left port, I tried multiple times. Today, it chose to EITHER charge the computer and do nothing else, OR connect the display ONLY, OR connect only the USB ports. Notably, no more than one of these worked at a time, and what it chose to do changed each time.
  • The back right port behaved the same way.
  • The front left port chose to either charge the laptop or not. Nothing else. (this is expected, though.)
  • The front right port did nothing.

Usually, what will happen is I’ll try each of the four ports, see which one feels like working today, and eventually, if I get lucky, with a 50% chance the dock will come up correctly with charging, display and USB. The front right is a little more likely to succeed. Over time this success rate has declined from probably 80% when I got the computer. I don’t know why.

If it succeeds at connecting fully, something amazing may happen, at any time. The computer will decide to give up on charging, while failing to notify the OS that it has done so. This appears as “plugged in but not charging”; on Linux this does not switch to battery power settings and does not alert the user either, which means that I can keep working in Performance Mode until I’m alerted “battery low” out of nowhere, or, if I leave the laptop running overnight, I wake up to a dead computer with my session lost.

What. On. Earth. How is this this broken?

I’ve never seen anyone else in the forums discussing problems this severe. Of course, I know that Framework just chose to not respond to the three year old thread about iPhones, so I presume they’re either intentionally ignoring USB-C bugs or genuinely don’t know what the problem is.

Is my computer busted? Why can’t I find a single dock that does work? I purchased 4 from various flea markets in total and they’ve all failed. Surely every other user can’t also be unable to use a dock? Why is this computer the only one with these problems?

I have mostly transitioned to using my Framework Desktop, mostly for the reason that it works nearly flawlessly with this dock, every time. Just like every other computer I’ve ever used.

2

My issues are not as extreme, but you are not alone. On my CalDigit TS4, I have to unplug and replug sometimes to get the monitor recognized. Sometimes the monitor works, but it wont charge. Luckily this went from happening 30% of my boot attempts to <1%, but it isn’t gone.

I also have fun with my external M.2 to USB-C enclosure, which after writing a certain amount of data to it, some AMD pci kernel module throws a stack trace and I have to reboot to fix it.

3

I am currently dealing with a similar issue right now with the support team. Reading this post really concerns me, because I am beginning to be worried about the long term viability of all of the Framework machines purchased on my advice by family and colleagues.

Something that may be useful for you to know is that when USB-C becomes orientation specific for charging, that generally means that there is a fault in one of its two CC paths (CC1 or CC2) or in the USB-C/PD controller circuitry associated with that path. When a charger (or a dock with charging capability) plugs into a USB-C port, the charger/dock needs to see a pull-down resistance on one of these pins, and then the Framework and the dock/charger will exchange some messages to decide how much power to supply (what voltage and current) to the laptop’s power circuitry. If there is a bad connection / intermittent connection, then this “conversation” can also fail causing it to stop charging after it has started.

One cause of a failure like this is bad solder joints on the pins of the receptacle. (The framework chassis flexes much more than I would have expected before buying it, so it is possible that it is not mechanically strong enough to prevent the normal flex of moving the machine from stressing the USB-C receptacle solder joints, but that would mean this is a mechanical design failure on the part of the chassis.)

Did you contact support? If so, what did they say?

I would love to see you resolve this. It is not right that such a basic issue should cause you to throw away an otherwise great laptop.