I installed some padding. I used TP-3 Arctic 1.5mm height.
I used a piece of paper and a pencil to make a mask to use for the padding and cut it to size.
Then I made a opening for the stud so the padding doesn’t stack with the stud putting uneven stress on the CPU area. Note the dot near the middle.
The mainboard has black studs supporting it. So it is screwed in with the 6 screws but also supported by the black studs all over the bottom of the mainboard.
This means that normally there’s a area that only has air which is a good insulator if it’s not moving. It must be around 1.5mm.
I don’t have calipers at hand to measure the studs, so if anyone else has a chance to measure them that would be great info. (The height)
The 1.5mm padding doesn’t seem to interfere with the installation of the mainboard back in it’s normal placement. The material property allows for it to squeeze in by design,
i am really excited for your Results. After i loosened all 6 of my Mainboard Screws as you did. and just gently tightening them to when they just start to stop. I got reduced my “Spike” during Boot and its staying silent when in Desktop. And i am hitting more stable High 15ks in CBR23. Funny Think the “Temp” Delta increased again, but it didn’t hurt Performance.
I Get 63W pulled from the CPU in the Start of a BenchRun falling to 51W over the 10min Cycle.
I tried that screw loosening trick, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. Needless to say, seeing 37W max, 34W sustained is very concerning.
Edit: I also tried tweaking the tension on the heatsink retention screws, and now the core-to-core delta is more than 20°C (with Core1 now being the coolest core at 79.8°C max and Core4 hitting 100°C)
Thanks for testing, well thats really bad, to see that this happened after a Mainboard Replacement. Did you try, removing it fully and reseating? Maybe there happened a Fault during Install? (Well possibly unlike as it worked fine for some weeks)
Just for Info, i also as mentioned before i redid my GPU with my “possible” Fake PTM7950 and my GPU Temps are really great. (Stats in the Top)
I’ll give Mainboard removal and reinstall a shot, sure. I see no harm in doing so.
As an aside, I have noticed something a bit strange about the lower chassis and I wanted to get y’all’s opinions on this. Upon looking closely at the edges, it seems like the enclosure curves slightly upwards at the corners. I took some pictures to illustrate:
If you notice, you can see the keys on the keyboard and some light shine through the bend in the center of the chassis. I used the edge of my portable monitor (which is perfectly flat) to make sure it was properly visible in the pictures.
The same thing happens at the opposite side of the chassis, as well as the front edge. I wonder if this could have to do with the decaying thermals.
I have not looked into the dGPU yet, does it also have LM or something else?
Did you have thermals measured before you changed it out, did you see any difference?
I’m still in the process of testing. Did a couple of runs with the pads and later today will remove it again to get some sort of baseline.
The dGPU has normal Thermal Paste. It went down by 4-5C under full Load. When i set the Thermal Limit of my CPU to 65C during Gaming with Universal X86 Tuning Utility the Framework is pretty impressive how Silent it can be. BTW when Gaming the CPU only spikes to 35-40w (mostly below 30w) but for everyone affected by the Heattransfer Problem Thats Turbinesauna Territory.
As to your bending. I inspected mine and its hard to compare to yours. I aimed down the straight edge and i couldn’t notice any bending in the Bottom Case. My Screen is a little flexed, but not the Lower Casing. Sorry bad Focus
Eventually you guys could setup a “script-set” so people can replicate the exact tests you did.
This would enable a decent comparison table. We could indirectly also identify bad setup with that?
Note: We’ll need to take into account Windows and Linux OS.
You can just do a Cinebench R23 Run in Linux or in Windows, they do not defer that much. With Monitoring Tools in Linux i got less Points then in Windows. But a good Rule of Thumb is: If you hare in High Performance Mode in Linux or Windows and you are below 15k Points in CB R23 you have very likely a Throttling Issue.
Tested with Nobara 40
One with only the thermal pads beneath the core.
One with thermal pads beneath the core and on top of the heat-pipes, below the top plate.
And completely stock.
After running multiple tests and reviewing the scores, i cannot say I see any significant increase or decrease in performance running the benchmark.
I see better results on a cold start (no heat soak present in the system)
I see slightly better thermals on the over al lows with the pads installed, which makes sense as there’s more surface area to dissipate heat too that is outside of the laptop body.
Having both the pads beneath and at the top also disproves the theory that it might be an issue with the mounting pressure, as with this config the cpu and heatsink/heat-pipes are basically sandwiched, with both bottom and top pressure (not a lot, but if it matter I would see some differences).
So for conclusions, please note, only 1 system was tested;
You can use this type of padding to slow the rate of system heat soaking, but I don’t see much benefit from it.
Mounting pressure seems not to be the issue.
Cause for the uneven thermals still to be determined.
side note, on a cold start I have seen it pull as high as 79 corwatt and all cores average hit ~4400mhz on full load. I have the R9.
I Already did think about this Topic, I suspect Core 4-8 Are located in the Area nearest to the “Triangle” Edge, as those Cores are the hottest ones mostly and the Better cooled Cores are the ones more on the Edge of the Die.
As you can See on my Picture how the PTM is Spread. And where there is more PTM on the Heatsink/Core there is a “High Spot” as its Where the worst Heattransfer happens.
This Picture was taken after my First “Lapping” Attempt, but its nearly Identical to before Lapping. In The Later Lapping Runs i tried removing more Material on the Inner Area and the Other Sides, that helped a bit with better Spread Heattransfer.
No snark intended with the following question. It looks like those who have had their boards exchanged have seen a performance increase of 10-15 percent. Is that accurate? Are there other benefits beyond better performance at full load? I finally restarted to windows and tested my system, just curious about the pros and cons. Thanks all.
Yeah, I’d say that’s accurate. The main benefit is CPU performance finally reaching the range expected from the 7840HS/7940HS at the power draw Framework themselves are targeting (45W sustained, somewhere between 55-65W burst peak).
However, just a bit of warning: I already had my Mainboard replaced once and, while it did perform within spec initially, it has dropped about 10% of its total performance after a little over a month AND now the core-to-core temperature delta has increased massively from 6.8°C to 20°C now. Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of this development, and clearly neither does Framework, since they’re now requesting that I send in my entire laptop for them to inspect. The cause of the thermal issues (which in turn cause the performance deficiencies) is apparently undetermined, at least to our knowledge.
Thank you for the reply. My test numbers weren’t great, but for my use case I’m very rarely taxing the machine, so I think I will sit tight for now, rather than go through the hassle of swapping things out and potentially winding up where I started. I appreciate the insight. Have a great day!
The greatest Benefit if it works as intended, the Laptop is staying alot quieter during Low to Medium Use. The Cpu is only Hitting 70C at 30W instead of 100C at 30w is quiet a Jump on Noise. Why i started Testing is that i was annoyed, that the Framework was a Turbine even on low end Tasks and even Hitting 90C during Startup. which i did not expect after the Great Reviews.
That makes sense. I am not questioning any issues that you or others had or have, I’m just trying to understand things so that I can make an informed choice. My machine doesn’t run hot or noisy, but again, I typically do not tax it very much. I have the 7940 and 96 gb of ram. I got just over 14k in cinebench r23, so presumably that is lower than what it should be, but if the system is working for my use case, and if going through the hassle of swapping things out may have me still in the same place, I don’t know if I will pursue it. Others may make a different choice in the same circumstance, and that’s fine. I’m in waffle mode at the moment.
Same, I started wondering what was happening with my system, fans blowing while basically it was doing nothing.
Then I stumbled on different topics in these forums and did the bench-marking and found this is not right. The board is replaced and it is hitting the numbers it should.
I am not sure if this was happening from the start as I wasn’t using the system as often as I had been more recently.
I will be on a quest getting the temps down in normal use just lower the rate for the fans to spin up, or just lower rpms in general prolonged use.
