I did some reading on the documentation and my feelings are mixed!
I’ve been eyeing the Alienware x16 w/ the 4090m & 7940hs for a minute now but the framework 16 looks so much better.
If the framework can use a 4090, I’ll get it instead for sure. Though I’m not confident that the final design will be able to handle a 4090m, let alone a 4080m.
Usb c w/ the latest pd standard can only handle up to 240w, limiting gpu options to the less power hungry 4070m or lower (and similar amd cards).
Reading the documentation, it would appear that power can be fed through the expansion bay:
“…This allows power to be fed from the Expansion Bay back into the laptop in an Extended Battery scenario or another type of card that has a power supply attached.”
Which means theoretically, (please correct me if I’m wrong) it is possible to have an expansion bay gpu that has a port for a barrel charger for a 330w power brick to power a 4080m/4090m chip.
These expansion cards WILL be expensive — both for framework to manufacture and for consumers to buy. If framework doesn’t take that route, I doubt anyone else will.
And if that’s the case, I’ll pass until we see some higher power designs
Nearly the same setup here, except my desktop is just my laptop 13 + eGPU.
I still have one device left, which is the media center for the TV, as my RPI 3 is too slow for 4K. But I will wait until I need to upgrade my Mainboard and then use that old one behind my TV.
Yeah I think I have to agree with that.
Not only would it suck to have to shell out a few grand so soon after getting my 13 inch, half the reason I went framework was the enviromental aspect. I would hate to have my current machine go to waste so soon in it’s life.
But I will say I do like the idea of a 16 inch, especially if it has a better battery life.
This allows power to be fed from the Expansion Bay back into the laptop in an Extended Battery scenario or another type of card that has a power supply attached.
I probably won’t. It looks amazing and if I’m ever in the market for a gaming powerful laptop, then yes, absolutely.
As it is right now, i do most of my gaming at home on my pretty beefy desktop. So my plan is to go with the Ryzen 7 mainboard swap (with a 1x32 RAM for future upgradability) and grab a smaller NVMe drive to stick with my old 1260p mobo into the new Cooler Master case getting released soon. I’ll just use the old one as a home server or something similar!
Edit: I’m going with 2x32GB so that i can match what i currently have in my Framework today. Very exciting!
Eventually. I expect it will be a lot more expensive than the current size.
It’s funny: Last month, after years, I finally got the 13" Framework, only because I thought I couldn’t wait any longer for the inevitable larger model.
Right now, no - a 16" laptop is very far down my list of priorities, which include upgrading the network, external storage (I seriously need to consolidate the data from all the various drives down to 2-3, as well as getting my failing 980 Pro replaced), and 13th Gen mainboard. Heck, I’d like to see Framework offer a 13" display part with proper HDR support, and I’d get that even if it’s still 60Hz and touchless.
@rn1234 PD3.1 can go up to 240W, but there’s nothing out there that can 1) soak up all the 240W of input power that isn’t a “gasless” generator, and 2) the host needs to be able to handle 48V of input voltage. Most gaming laptops stick with 20V and simply crank up the amperage instead.
As for display, I hate 16:9 with a passion - no vertical real estate really sucks for doing real work. I’m not bothered at all with black bars, having lived with them for the past decade on a MacBook Pro.
Ethernet expansion card? I didn’t buy that either, but it’s not because it doesn’t fit flush (it WILL require a full redesign of the entire laptop just to have that one card sit flush - are you willing to pay for the tooling costs?); rather, it’s that 2.5GbE adapters are plentiful and even some Thunderbolt docks have them. My current setup has a Plugable 2.5GbE connected via a bus-powered Orico 1C2A hub.
@Emmanuel_Mammah m4080/m4090 is IMO a firm no. Not only is it going to consume as much as 175W under load by itself, it also moves the bottleneck to other places e.g. CPU, RAM. By that point you’re better off buying an Alienware or Razer, because I don’t expect Framework to offer a 13950 option on the 16".
@jcpb my 280W ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition laptop would like to disagree with you. It runs over a barrel jack because USB can’t deliver enough power. Fortunately the laptop can also use USB-PD, but not at full speed, and performance does suffer.
Unless framework can offer the Radeon 6800M or better, (I assume with a similar high power budget) I can’t really justify buying it for gaming. Also no NVidia please I want to be able to dual boot linux and not deal with nvidia linux driver hell.
Um, what part of “the host needs to be able to handle 48V of input voltage” did you not understand? You said it yourself: your ROG Strix G15 can’t do PD3.1 at the full 240W, it can only do PD2.0/3.0 at 100W simply because then the input voltage is 20V, which is most likely what your laptop is getting from its 280W (20V/14A) DC input. ShortCircuit (LTT) recently did an unboxing of a new Razer gaming laptop and that has a 330W DC power brick still doing 20V.
What all that means is your ROG Strix G15, like pretty much every other gaming laptop out there that requires more power than what conventional PD3.0 can provide - and this includes the likes of Lenovo that uses vendor-proprietary methods to pump 20V/6.75A (135W) over USB-C - does not have the electrical engineering under the chassis to handle 48V of input voltage.
The irony is ASUS already has made a product that can handle 48V of input voltage: Asus ProArt StudioBook One, with a Apple 100W-sized Navitas GaNFast DC power adapter that does 300W at 48V/6.25A. The technology clearly exists, and high-end gaming laptops aren’t cheap to begin with.
Framework 16 Power limit:
48v(240w type c) does start to exist and framework still has time to backorder those.
For regular usages it might be 100w typec from the laptop ports, then a seperate 240w max type c for <=140w dgpus / 330w barrel for 145-165w dgpu options on the Expansion Bay. The barrel can be easily phased out in future expansion bays when typec pd becomes competent enough, or if they go for proprietary charging agreements etc (some asian mobile brands have 6a for 120w etc)
Thoughs on the future of framework(slot/phasing out parts towards a new chassis):
The current type-c slot wont support 240w and some ports can easily be revamped into a more compact package, as else audio&charging would leave users with 4 usable slots which is sufficient for the average joe but not everyone expecially enthusiasts that continue to make up most of the early adoptors. They could have 3old+4smaller slots on the 16’’ slots to still accomodate users that want to reuse current slots as they get phased out(lets say they get supported on ‘new’ chasis and co-exist till 2025)
Framework have been very commited with the current framework13 (gen11＞12＞13+ryzen) but at some point would still need a newly improved chasis in a year or two (maybe accomodating the current chasis for another generation’s mainboard but distributing the entire laptop in a new chasis). I cant possibly see users wanting the same chasis in 5 years time.
(Hot take) dgpu power limit(ExpansionBay):
Framework definitely (should) plan for at least a 165w max dgpu else it would be a major dissapointment, even if the laptop runs better on 150w some users need the extra juice, and this would justufy the laptop abit better.
Competing with low-mid range 140w 4070 ones(~＄1400) is unwise and would cripple the price competitiveness of the likely expensive laptop.
My guess is theyr holding back to see if Amd will be doing a reasonable mobile gpu at a sensible power rate comparing to the disappointingly spec’ed 4070m, else a 140w 4080/90 wont have a good value though is still way more powerful than a 140w 4070
Speculation on cpu&gpu specs:
I think the framework 16 will run the r9 7945hx(likely with the delayed release for supply)which should in theory be easier to cool. Its known that intel will improve its notorious efficiency with their next 20a&18a processing (5nm) and release one at the end of the year and we may get an upgradable mainboard if that’s a thing.
Its tough to choose between nvidia/amd as people in machine learning will weirdly need nvidia+ubuntu, and amd (at least for now) simply doest do the trick. My guess is we will definitly get a 140w 4060&70 and maybe a 150-165w 4080&90, and something from amd if they release a mid/high tier i dont want that rx7600
I’m second guessing myself now. It depends on whether they can get Dragon Range to work in it or if we’re just getting Phoenix. I assume Dragon Range since they need all the PCIE they can get (two more expansion cards plus the expansion bay). And the GPU concept is a must for me, if they cant get Asus or Gigabyte or MSI or Sapphire or XFX or whoever to play ball, that 2 CU iGPU isn’t gonna cut it. But Framework has made a pretty big bet and probably knows something we don’t.
With the addition of AMD and the 16" size this is the one for me to jump in on. I’ve wanted to support Framework for some time but was put off by no AMD choice (yeah… fanboy here) and the screen aspect ratio. The modular GPU-bay is a bonus. I’m really looking forward to the 16’s release!
Having just bought the 13 – yes, actually. It’ll be good to have the 13 for backup or long-distance travel; may give it to less tech-savvy family members so that I can repair their devices more easily.
If and only if it has an option for discrete AMD graphics.
I’m on Linux, and with my current laptop (a Razer Blade Pro with an i7-7700HQ, GTX 1060, and 16 GB of DDR4) I have had just way too many issues with NVIDIA’s drivers.
Either 1) I’ll have inconsistent performance under Wayland, and games running on top of Valve’s Proton will constantly register as ‘not responding’ when they are loading assets, or 2) the drivers will break my dual monitor setup if I’m running under Xorg.
The latter may be due to the laptop being poorly designed, though. Perhaps they hooked the internal display up directly to the i7’s integrated graphics, while they hooked the HDMI port directly up to the 1060, and didn’t provide a way for both to access both aside from Windows-only drivers. Either way, I need a new laptop as fast as possible. And since this has consistently been my only PC, I’d like to have as much power as I can - when I can.
To justify the price premium of higher end laptop it must have…
At least 15.6" screen
Touch screen
Active stylus
All the other features typically found in higher end laptops.
Not a gamer. Extreme graphics performance is a waste for me.
But user interface (e.g. touchscreen with active stylus) is paramount.
Let me opt for Intel HD graphics and touchscreen with active stylus instead of costly gamer graphics.
My last laptop was Acer Aspire R7-572 (look it up). Best laptop I ever had. It recently died after a solid 9 years of heavy daily use. So sad. I still can’t believe it’s gone and miss it’s touchscreen, active stylus, and easel display positioning so much. Bought a low end machine for interim use while I seek it’s replacement.
Someone should build main board upgrades for existing old laptops. That would be awesome.
I am currently using a 3080 laptop for machine learning/ AI development. Eyeing both the 13inch with a egpu or the 16inch.
wishlist/ wants for 16 inch
-4090 16gb or rtx 5000 ada, or the 12gb rtx ada cards are ok but not great, insane idea, is if you can support 7x gpus, one on the back and 6 via tb4 I would be ordering that in a heartbeat. but not sure if the throughput is going to be enough on tb4
2 to 3 m.2 slots
-front and back facing webcam for computer vision
-60% qmk keyboard
-64 to 128gb ram
I currently have an Asus G15 with a 3070, which is a fine laptop for game development in Unreal, but it’s so so noisy when the GPU is in use, and if I limit it to the silent profile, the performance is quite bad and seems artificially limited to 30fps, which was not why I got a 3070 laptop.
I don’t know how good these new AMD APUs and mobile GPUs are, but if I have OK graphics performance from a Steam Deck or one of the other new competitors that are similarly small, I expect a laptop with more room inside and a beefier cooling solution to be nearly silent when doing all but the most demanding tasks. If Framework can get the 16 to give good performance and remain very quiet I think I will buy one.
The only other issue is build quality. From what I’ve seen of the 13 inch model, it’s built pretty well, but there were complaints about the original model having a loose hinge, and the 16 is far more modular, so I’m a little worried things may end up feeling flimsy. I presume getting it to feel solid and pleasant to use for long periods of time will be high on Framework’s list of priorities though so perhaps I shouldn’t be worried.
