Why I Love It

I’m batch 2. My DIY FW16 arrived last Wednesday and it took longer to download Windows than it did to get my RAM and drives installed. I’d seen so many videos on YouTube, the whole process seemed familiar. I’m now typing this message on the keyboard, which is feels far better than I was led to believe by some of the complaints. I have no complaints about flex.

I do, however, have a problem. Early on my fans didn’t sound right. Specifically, the fan on the right side, at low speed, sounded like a film projector. A little faster and it reminded me of being a kid and using clothespins to attach cards to my bicycle spokes. At high speed it seemed to sound more normal but of late, pushing the machine to cause the fans to really ramp up creates a sound on the right that is reminiscent of a dentist’s drill.

I’ve been in contact with support and they’ve been responsive. I’ve provided them with the information that they’ve requested and I presume that they’ll take care of me. But here’s the thing:

I put in my pre-order last summer but so many times I considered cancelling and getting something else. In particular, I looked at the Legion Pro 7 with the Nvidia 4080 GPU. I never pulled the trigger because I preferred the AMD option with the 16 core CPU but it never seemed to be available in this country. It finally became available on the Lenovo website but I was hesitant because I read comments from people who purchased only to see shipping times slip and change, with no contact from Lenovo to explain when it might ship. Then I saw the Reddit posts from so many people who had trouble with their Legion machines. Granted, I realize that most people are probably happy customers with no problems. I don’t care about them. I care about the ones who had problems, because what I didn’t see were comments saying, “Lenovo took care of it.” Instead, I saw comments about how customers had to ship off for repair only to see their machines disappear into a black hole. Others got service only to have the repair cause more damage.

All of which is to say, I don’t know what would happen if I’d gotten a Lenovo with a bad fan. I’m pretty sure, though, that just getting another fan from Lenovo and popping it in myself wouldn’t have been an option.

So here I am. Worst case, I buy a $29 fan from Framework when they become available, and install it. I just timed myself reinstalling the bad fan that I removed to get photos for Framework. It took me 6 minutes and 15 seconds to go from start of the process to rebooting to the home screen. Yeah, I could have gotten more GPU performance for the money, but man, there’s something that is just so comforting knowing that I can replace basically any part that needs to be replaced and keep this machine running like new.

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From experience, I can tell you what Lenovo would do: compel you to upgrade to a support contract, then make you wait a week for an appointment for a tech to come to your location and do the swap. The support contract was actually pretty reasonable, like $80/year in 2019 iirc. But that’s still pretty expensive when I can do it myself, as you say, in 5 minutes.

If you’re not in a location where they have a tech, well … shipping your laptop to a Lenovo service center and waiting for a month is probably the only option. Most people would probably just buy another computer. : /

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Yeah, I know what you mean. A friend of mine got a Zephyrus G14 2022 on my recommendation (in 2022), as he needed a dGPU for gaming which the FL13 doesn’t have.
Now he had some weird issues with the entire thing randomly shutting off in Linux due to an issue in the AMD graphics driver taking down the entire kernel (therefore no logs are available). After downgrading his bios it seems to be okay now, but not sure yet. His battery also went below 70% health, so he got a new one - can’t be sure if it’s an original one though, as Asus doesn’t sell them directly. Most likely it is, but the doubt still remains.
I would’ve bought the G14 too, if I hadn’t seen Linus’ video last February (a year ago now…) about the FL16 and immediately fell in love with it.

To be honest, it would’ve been nice if I had this laptop months ago, as I kind of needed it.
On the other hand, I’m so glad I waited for the FL16. The awesome repairability, great Linux support, community designed/built parts for the expansion bay (oculink and many others), modularity coupled with the upgradable parts just gives me peace of mind. It’s a lot of money, but you get so much value in return, too. Other benefits are the reprogrammable keyboard using QMK and the swappable expansion cards. No more shit cable routing because all USB-A ports are on the left. If anything ever breaks, I’ll be able to get a replacement for just that part, or it might even be possible to let a repair shop repair the damaged part itself for things like the motherboard.

Really looking forward to my batch 5 one shipping soon :​D

I had a similar problem. If you’re feeling adventurous, you might be able to fix it yourself, assuming the issue is the same as mine, and not a fault with the fan bearing itself.

For me, there was a small rubber piece inside the fan mount area that wasn’t fully cut off on my left side fan. When the keyboard and top-plate were all installed, and the machine sitting level on a table, there was just enough pressure to push the fan onto the exposed nib, causing the clicking noise.
I removed the GPU module and disassembled the fan in question. I used a pair of tweezers to pull off the rest of the nib and my noise was gone afterward.


It might not be the same piece I found for yours, could be the black airflow tape sticking up or another item not flush on the bottom contacting the fan.

There’s a writeup of the steps to take the fan out here( Graphics Module Fans - Framework Guides), but it was pretty straightforward to figure out, I didn’t go through the videos myself.

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Oh, that’s interesting! I’ll check mine and see. The first time I took the right side fan out, the airflow tape on that side was wrinkled. I thought it might be the problem but the noise persisted after I flattened it out. But I didn’t see that nib area. I’ll have to check it out and see. Thanks!

Opened mine back up. Initially I’d found that the airflow tape on the right fan had wrinkled. I straightened it. Now I looked and it was wrinkled again and had a crease. I cut away all the parts of the tape that weren’t laying flush and cleaned it up. Booted back up and the weird sound is gone. So I think you nailed it. My problem wasn’t actually with the fan.

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Nice!
I was worried too at first boot that I’d have to warranty a completely new device, not the best feeling. Having the modularity and availability of replacement parts is really nice as a backup.

Why I love it…Where is the “warranty void if removed” sticker ? :smile:

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Isn’t that on the snack box ???

I’ve had good luck with Lenovos, but you’re definitely flying on a wing and a prayer when you drop $2k-$3k (or more!) on basically all of the other brands. The trade off in our case (received my B1 FW16 today) is that we’re getting half the CPU/GPU performance for the same money, but the peace of mind is a nice benefit.

I’d say the CPU is great, just the dGPU that’s a bit lackluster for the combined price.

I’m curious if Framework is going to release a motherboard based on strix halo (12 cores and way better iGPU) next year. That would be awesome and open up the expansion bay for an OcuLink x8 adapter for example.

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