I am a cash-strapped user who wanted good repairability and had to opt for a 12 because it was the best option for my situation, economic and otherwise. However I am also a fan of running compute-heavy workloads.
The processing speed of my FW12’s i5 is certainly not bad. I could not ask for more at this price, given the amount of RAM I got with it (48GB from elsewhere, before AI datacenters took all the production capacity and made prices skyrocket). It never throttles since the TDP is only 15W. Cools down pretty fast after I shut it off too.
However I’ve noticed that while the machine is in regular laptop mode, the heat exhaust is pointed directly at a certain part of the display (see image, selected part is the hotspot). Could a Framework engineer perhaps give some insight as to what the long term effects will be of constantly bombarding that part of the display frame with 20W of heat? Are there any electronics behind there that might fail earlier due to the heat? Should I run it with the lid closed to alleviate this?
I used to have a very poorly designed gaming laptop that threw about 100W of total heat right onto the screen. 4 years later there are very visible areas of the screen that have shifted in color due to this. I don’t want it to happen to my 12. (Though it is nice knowing I’ll be able to replace it easily if I ever do have to.)
That is a passive vent, and may even intake a bit of air when the fan runs. The fan exhaust is on the rear edge of the laptop. A bit of heat may radiate from those little holes, but it certainly won’t be blowing out of those holes, and it would be only a small portion of the total heat.
However, with the display open, it does extend slightly into the path of the vent on the back side, so it’s possible that some of the heat from the vent will end up blowing on the bottom of the lid and then rising up past the display. I doubt it’s enough heat to damage the display, even long term, but I can’t say for sure. If you want a response from Framework, you’re better off starting a support ticket. They may answer in the forums, but the forums are generally a place for community support and engagement.
Edit: I just re-read your post and now I think you were talking about the vent on the back and not those little holes. Apologies if I assumed incorrectly. Cheers!
The fw13 does basically blast a significant amount of the hot exhaust air at the screen and so do a lot of other laptop designs and I have so far not seen any reports of damage or degradation due to that.
For one hot fan exhaust isn’t actually that hot. I tried to melt a pla fan exhaust diverter with my t480s at some-point and didn’t not manage no matter what I did which means that even that extremely hot feeling air was <65C and at least lcds do like it a bit warm (according to valve it even makes them perform a bit better).
