Weird hardware issues - Framework 12 13th Gen

Community Support
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1

Hi.

I have e-mailed support about this, but wondering if anyone in the community has any ideas/has seen something similar.

I recently ordered a Framework 12 (13th gen) Worked fine for a week, then had a full mainboard failure which support had to replace. The new Mainboard arrived recently, and again, it worked fine for about a week, and today we are seeing new issues (though slightly different this time).

Put simply - the issue relates to getting the laptop to charge. We couldn’t get the laptop to charge this morning (yes, using capable USB-C PD charger, but even issues with official framework one that works on my other Framework devices). We’ve reseated the battery, and the mainboard, but I did some testing whilst the mainboard was out. Plugging AC into the top left port showed a red/red flash. Plugging into any of the other ports showed a red/blue flash. Following these checks, I put the hardware back into the chassis, and I can just about get charging working now on 3 ports, intermittently, but interestingly, if the top left expansion card is plugged in at all, then charging on all other ports stops completely.

I guess my worry here is that this is the second weird failure, having already had the mainboard replaced. Has anyone seen similar issues to this? The specific LED combinations are not documented on the knowledgebase, so I’m unsure what they mean. But, I’m worried whether there could perhaps be something like a battery/electrical fault that is causing hardware failures?

I would value anyone’s input whilst I wait for a response from the support team.

Thanks

2

Welcome to the forum.

What brand is your PD charger?

3

The same issue occurs with my official Framework charger, and a Lenovo charger, both with PD support/multiple outputs to negotiate. Both of these chargers work without issue on other devices.

To add to the list of problems, the laptop just completely reset itself and shut off. Charging from the fw charger at the time, I wasn’t actually doing anything on the laptop at the time as I was on my phone, but I watched the laptop just die in front of me. It’s booting again, with the same charging issues, but it does seem to be a problem.

I’m not sure if I just have really bad luck getting 2 mainboards in a row which are faulty, or if there is some other issue like the battery or within the chassis that’s causing these problems. :man_shrugging: