My laptop came with a power brick, and a USB cable. But I’d still like to know what USB cords are compatible as a backup.
Is the limitation the power brick/wall adapter, or the USB cable or both.
Since I see USB cables listed online that handle 240 W. Could I use any 240 W USB C cable. Or would I also need to find a suitable wall adapter to go along with it.
The computer will draw the lowest power the wall adapter and cable can provide. For example if your adapter is 240W but only a “generic” cable the actual power will be only 60W. If an 240W cable is used alongside 100W wall adapter, the actual draw will be at or slightly below 100W
So is 60 W the minimum then?
Also is there any potential issue with 3rd party power bank quality, providing consistent power. Or can the laptop handle whatever gets thrown at it, and I can just use any device that can handle the wattage.
In the question of what is the limiting factor it is going to be whichever device supports the lowest power delivery: the charger, the device, or the cable.
If you get a USB-C cable rated for 240 W it should be fine to use with the 180 W charger from Framework assuming it is a properly rated cable.
60 W should be the minimal. But if the cable is junky enough, it can be lower due to the wires being thinner than they should and producing resistance.
A decent charging cable have the connectors to route any amount of power. Whether said charging cable actually allows for 240W to pass through, and be safely insualted, is another story.
In theory all of them are, It’s just some big positive and negative voltage wire, and some smaller sense wire.
No! Because apparently they had thought about this. therefore:
searching for “epr cable” gives plenty of results.
That depends. I had a 100W power bank that broke within a month after 85W sustained usage, and I have another 100W power back that cuts power to 32W after half an hour of 85W usage. In this case, it might be better to deliberately use a crap cable that only negotiate 60W to preserve the power bank. If you want best power, you can use a 240W cable on all of your devices, the actual power use will be the lower of wall adapter and the device.
can you provide names for the two power banks?
You do not want a “crap cable”, you just want a good cable that does not have a E-mark chip. It’s a chip in the cable just tell your device “Yes, I swear I am capable of handling 5A and xxx Watts”.
An actual crap cable can cheap out on the thickness of the conductors. This causes higher resistance, the voltage drops and the cable heat up some, wasting some power.
You can just search for the wattage you need or want.
Anything over 60W has to have a chip. And anything over 100W has to have a chip that says “I swear I can handle EPR up to xxx Watts”. Search for the 180W and it has to be ERR up to 180W or customers will complain & return them.
For USB Power delivery.
The USB Power brick has a chip in it that the laptop queries to find out what levels of power it can deliver.
The USB cable has a chip in it that the laptop queries to find out what level of power it can safely deliver without damaging the cable.
The laptop then decides what to ask for.
So, when the power brick is a 180W brick, and the cable is a 240W cable, the laptop will ask for up to 180W.
When the power brick is 240W, and the cable is 100W, the laptop will ask for up to 100W.
But a word of warning, some cables and power bricks lie about what they are capable of and it ends is bad smoke.
The clunky power brick and cables that came with my Framework 13 I5-11 was too big for my laptop sleeve. Spent some time looking and after a couple of attempts with small power bricks I ended up with this: IOGEAR 100Watt with their cable.
The first one is Shenzhen WOHOO Technology Notebook PowerBank 100W 20000mAh. To make matters worse, after it broke I opened it and I found that the cells are well unbalanced, one is 3.7V another is at 4.1V.
The second one is UGREEN 145W 25000mAh Power Bank. This one has a 100W(out)/65W(in) USB-C port, a 45W(in/out) USB-C port, and a 18W out USB-A port. It has two inductors since It was able to charge at port 2 and discharge at port 1 at the same time and vice versa. The step-down to 32W only occurs at hot weather, could be overheating. After half a year of usage, port 2 and 3 died and now only port 1 is useable.
Sorry for the misinterpretation. What I meant “crap” is that there are tons of “generic” cables with random brands that claim to have “fast” charging and “high speed” data transfer. All of them have the lowest actual performance, 20V3A and 480Mbps. Use one of these to reduce power draw of your digital device if desired.
Some EPR cables claim that it has overheat protection, when the E-marker detect the cable is too hot it’ll tell the supply to turn off. Is that true?
Cables don’t have overheat protection in the sense that they don’t have any temp sensors in them.
The chip just tells the laptop what power it is capable of. No temp sensors needed.
E.g.
It tells laptop the cable can do 100W.
Laptop asks for anything up to 100W, and so can never overheat.
I guess that’s more or less false advertising
I tested this one last night, it works. It’s short though.
Smaller sellers can say whatever they wish with no consequence. Only features essential to the function that most buy the item for, might lead to problems if they lie. Since on places like amazon, they’ll see higher returns, and eventually their ranking in the search results will drop. But they just make a new business name & start fresh. Amazon has a big problem with that, which they just ignore. Click the seller’s name next to “Sold by:” to see the real registered business name. If it’s a string of nonsense, don’t buy from them. Or better yet, don’t buy off of amazon.
But I don’t believe a cable with the proper gauge conductors has any need for temperature sensors or “overheat protection”. Nor would it be practical. For a power supply that’s normal, not a cable. So a cable claiming “overheat protection” is a sign to avoid that one, since its BS.
Where overheating cables can be a problem is when it’s junk with cheap conductors. Either thin gauge or not even copper. It will be made worse if the cable is bunched together or coiled while in use and / or under something that traps heat.
Note that the magnet test is not reliable on shielded cables. Ferromagnetic material may be in the shielding and it’s fine there. The shield is not meant to carry significant current.
Yeah that sound about right. Don’t go for these cheap unknown stuff.
interesting.
UGreen never had the best build quality, or quality of components. They are far from the worst, but far from a reliable option.
On the other hand, do I really trust them to source batteries actually capable of 4C/5C discharge? I sincerely doubt that. Plus, it’s usually not great for the battery life.
sound about right.
I imagine most of these are marketed to be used with phones. They are a significant bigger staple at the place these products gets made (china), and they are still poorly regulated, far beyond the QC 12345 and PD 123.
