USB-C charging

Correction - I double checked and I’m getting 150 minutes from the frame.work battery, not 90 minutes, sorry about that. The 90 minutes was seen anecdotally when in the field, the 150 minutes was what the laptop said it had immediately after disconnecting it after it was fully charged.

FYI, here are some more heavily loaded specs from my frame.work laptop, for further discussions :

@Myles_Dear thanks for the reply. It makes sense that if you are hitting the CPU hard it’ll significantly impact the battery runtime. For comparison, I have the middle cpu (the lesser i7), but also 64gb of ram. In typical use I keep the display on the lowest or second-lowest brightness level, wifi on, bluetooth off, camera and mic switches both off, and speakers off. This gives me a run time of about 6:15. I did wind up swapping out the 2TB WD 850 that I bought with the machine for an SK Hynix P31 2TB, which anecdotally is giving me longer battery life. I also have USB-C modules in all four slots, as the other modules have higher draws and I can swap them in if I need them. I’m running Pop!_OS, from what I have read Windows seems to be more tuned and should give a longer runtime.

TL;DR - I am guessing that if you are pushing the machine hard, your run time may not be unexpected. Some of the items I noted above may help. I’ll be interested to hear if you are able to squeeze out more battery life.

I’ve been using this USB-PD power bank with good results:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FX8GKJ5

On paper it slightly more than doubles the battery capacity of the laptop (in reality slightly less due to conversion losses).

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@Sean_Greenslade, It’s only 45W though. Can’t even run the laptop while charging it.

For me, a 30watt Apple MacBook Air charger is able to boost charge while running the laptop.
A 45watt Samsung charger does better.

FYI, Norton was recently discovered to run crypto mining in the background without user awareness. That could be a killer as well.

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Regarding Norton 360 and Crypto-Mining: To me, that’s a cash grab on Norton’s part. They get 15% and most likely any fees would be paid by the users, further reducing any returns.
I do not want my security products installing a virus like program. If I wanted to Mine Crypto-Currency I want to know I am mining it.
Thank you for this. I’ll have to check any computers I have to see if I still have this running.

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Always good to know that Norton are still today going out of their way to find reasons for me to replace it with something good on every computer I see :roll_eyes:

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I just charged my new framework with my pixel charger. So I assume as long as it has enough output yes it can charge from any charger.

I consider that a benefit. There’s not much point in charging the internal battery from an external battery. That just puts extra wear cycles on the internal battery, and wastes energy in the inefficiencies of the power conversion equipment inside both the power bank and the laptop.

In my ideal world, the laptop would detect that it is being supplied by a power bank and switch to a mode where it restricts the internal battery charge rate to something very low (e.g. 1 W) while running the load of the laptop off the external battery bank.

About the Norton crypto mining thing.
They are not actually mining without user awareness. The miner exe is installed with the suite, but it doesn’t actually run until the user chooses to opt in to it via the Norton UI.
Please don’t mistake me, I’m not defending Norton’s actions including a miner in security software. Just clarifying what is actually happening.

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@Sean_Greenslade the when the framework laptop is running at a high CPU usage even though it’s powered externally if that external power is not 100W it draws down from the battery. The HyperJuice battery bank I linked can supply that 100W preventing the laptop from needing to discharge the battery. Also, I think the latest bios firmware has modes to run without charging the battery.

The Framework’s CPU has a maximum package TDP of 28 W [ref], and its USB-C input system has a limit of 3 A at 20 V [ref] for a maximum input power of 60 W. Any supply larger than 60 W will not give you any additional gains. I can max my CPU out on a 45 W adapter without draining the battery.

Sort of. As of 3.07 it supports setting a charge limit, however this is a fixed value. It seems that there is a way of changing this dynamically within the OS, but there is not yet a way to poll the USB-C subsystem to determine what type of adapter is present. What I want could be accomplished by manually toggling into a “don’t charge” mode that sets the charge limit to the current state of charge, but it would be much nicer if this could be done automatically when the PD source is detected as a battery bank (e.g. Dual Role capable, VID/PID list, etc.).

@Sean_Greenslade, The type-c outputs:
“The laptop will dynamically allocate 3A to 1 port, and 1.5A to the remaining 3 ports while on battery.”

The inputs don’t have an amperage limit other than the thermal fuses. @nrp correct me if I’m wrong.

@Shawn_Lewis the input is current limited and set to the negociated PD current limit allowed by the charger/power supply.
If you hard exceed the input current limit, eg by using a low wattage charger without the battery, the CPU will be throttled.

@Kieran_Levin and what counts as low? 45W?

I know this is a little off topic (but there are a few messages in this thread so I’ll throw in my two cents), I’ll give my experience with Norton Crypto FYI. I’m running it on a new server I built six months ago (Intel(R) Core™ i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz 3.79 GHz, 32GB RAM installed, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU ). Initially, the miner ran great in the background but the server bricked when even lightly loaded. This improved after upgrading the graphics drivers. Now my server doubles as a heater (!) and I’m keeping my window cracked even in -18C (0F) outside weather, and half of the profits go back to pay for the electricity so the system is net profit positive, but not terribly environmentally sensitive, and Norton taking a 15% cut is pure villainy. Then, there’s the wear and tear on the $1000 GPU, which I can’t quantify at present. I suspect Norton Crypto will go away when Proof of Stake hits when the beacon chain merges into the Ether mainnet (The Merge | ethereum.org).

@Shawn_Lewis I would not recommend a power supply below 60W if not running with a battery, remember PL2 can allow the cpu to go well above 28W for seconds at a time. Plus there are plenty of things outside the CPU package consuming power, such as the NVME drive, which some models can burst to several W.

If you have 4 power hungry usb-c devices plugged in, they can consume a max of 37.5W as well.

Plus there is some regulator loss.

So depending on what you are doing, and what is plugged in I would recommend 60W to 100W.

To clarify @Sean_Greenslade post. The framework laptop supports power input of up to 20V-5A, not 3A. So the mainboard design can make use of 100W power supplies.

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Thanks for the clarification, that’s good to know.