Hey all, thanks for your time in advance. I know there’s a few other posts out there about this, but I’ve got an 11th gen intel I5 mainboard right now and I love my machine, but holy hell I’ve been using it a lot more lately and the BIOS battery drain is really starting to get on my nerves, so I think it’s time for me to upgrade. I don’t really want to be spending a whole lot of money right now on it as I only ever really use this machine for work/web browsing/nothing intense at all. Would the cheapest upgrade route be to the 12th gen and would it avoid the BIOS battery drain issue? Or would it be better to go 13th gen or even AMD?
I’ve got 16GB of 3200 mhz RAM (I think) and the standard intel wifi 6 card. I’ve also been considering just ditching windows and moving over to Ubuntu or a flavor of Linux that’s easy for me to move to, so I’m not too worried about having to buy a new windows license with new hardware. Let me know your thoughts, thanks again y’all.
Framework will send you a new RTC battery if you ask. If you’re brave, careful and skilled you can solder in an RTC battery replacement module, which they will also send you for free on request.
However the difference in performance between 11th gen and 12th gen is huge. You get an additional 8 CPU cores and go from a 4 core/8 thread machine to a 12 core/20 thread machine. (They’re E or efficient cores, lower clocked and with no hyperthreading, but they do have an impact.)
Okay well that’s good to know. I’ve not really had a big issue with battery life yet, but I don’t want it to die on me in the middle of working on something since I don’t always have my power brick with me. Apparently, something I’ve only just noticed, my RAM is only running at 2667 mhz and not the 3200 rated speed, so I may end up just buying some RAM from the marketplace anyway. Thanks for the quick reply!
If that’s the case, then do we know if the price of the 13th gen will come down after the intel ultra comes out? Or has it already come down in price, it’s been a while since I’ve looked at pricing on the website since I’ve been happy thus far with my laptop.
Also I’ve been aware of the replacement battery, but I have never touched a soldering iron in my life so I don’t know if I’d be comfortable doing that and possibly messing up the laptop. I plan on turning the old mainboard into an HTPC or something along that line down the road too. Thanks for the reply
At least where I am, it has already gotten a discount (7% on the base spec)!
Sorry by the way, I got a bit confused whether you were referencing the dead RTC cell or general battery life issues due to the retimers and BIOS of the 11th
Okay cool, yeah it seems it’s a bit cheaper. I’d probably go with the 13th gen i5, since I currently have an i5 and am happy with its performance, and the 12th gen is out of stock with what feels like probably not coming back in stock since it’s so old, but maybe. I also feel a bit silly asking this but would you recommend upgrading the RAM to something that would actually run at 3200 since there doesn’t seem to be a BIOS update coming out with XMP support?
Up to you! I probably wouldn’t, since I don’t expect a very large performance uplift, possibly 5-10% performance uplift on average.
Unfortunately, laptops (with the exception of gaming ones) generally don’t support XMP, since it runs RAM at higher voltages (1.35V as opposed to 1.2V, bad for battery life).
There’s some community lists of RAM compatible with JEDEC 3200 MT/s somewhere on the forum if you do decide to purchase some new RAM!
Cool, I appreciate the feedback! I’ll stick with what I have for now then, and maybe upgrade to what you mentioned down the road when I’m ready to turn my old mainboard into something else!
@Joseph_Wukasch you might be able to find someone looking to ditch a last gen board at a discount if you are willing to buy used. I can’t recommend 12th gen at all, I’m on it and hate its battery life.
Reddit has a Framework marketplace and a forum post to the effect of searching for a replacement board would be good too. A clear title stating you wish to purchase 13th gen or AMD would work. I sold a chassis to a buyer on the forum after frying the mainboard so it def works.
Noted yeah, I think the plan is to go with a 13th gen i5! Since there have been a couple comments on the battery life with 12th gen I won’t go that direction. Also not on Reddit so I’m glad to know there’s a marketplace there as well, I’ll have to check it out!!
I went from 11th Gen i5 to 13th Gen i5 about 5 months ago or so. It’s a noticable step up in compute, game frame rate, battery life, etc. For example, my massive GIS files load faster, way less likely to get bogged down panning around, etc. I’d say 1-2 hours more battery life on basic web browsing.
RAM is so cheap these days it wouldn’t hurt to upgrade that too.
I’m on Arch Linux using Hyprland window manager (Wayland graphics system), if it matters.
That’s good to know. If for some reason Windows gets mad and makes me have to reactivate because of a new motherboard/CPU combo, I’ll certainly switch over to Linux. I have zero desire to give Microsoft any more of my money for another activation key, even if it’s a cheap key.
