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I have Anker 65W and 100W GAN charger and both should work fine with the FW13 although one reviewer reported that a 65W charger (FW's own) cannot keep up with power consumption during intensive tasks so the laptop keeps flipping between AC and battery power. General consensus seems to be get a 100W charger to be safe, especially considering they're not much bigger than 65W ones.
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The only reason to have a desktop PC these days IMO is if you need something very powerful (for gaming, video editing, CAD etc.), otherwise laptops today can generally have plenty of power for most people.
So, yes, I'd just buy a dock for your FW and use that. Also worth getting a laptop stand to improve airflow around the case just in case things get toasty.
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As with any courier/delivery service it all depends where you live and how good or bad your local depot is. For some people FedEx will be the best of the lot, for others not so much. There's no hard and fast rule. In my case FedEx generally outperforms UPS for deliveries. For others it might be the other way round.
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For charging or charging and data? For charging I like the Anker braided ones. Just bought a 10ft, 100W cable but as with all charging cables the data rate is only 480Mbps.
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If you value battery life over everything else then a Macbook is a no-brainer IMO. That said, you should be able to get a Ryzen or even an Intel 13th gen FW13 to last at least 8 hours without much difficulty.
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yes, Thinkpads just seem so solid, even the more recent ones. The only thing I truly hate about them, build-wise, is that coating they use that's a huge grease magnet. If the weather's hot and/or you have sweaty hands a new Thinkpad will look like someone dumped a quart of motor oil over it within a few days! What's more, the grease marks in well-handled areas can be impossible to fully get out eventually regardless of the cleaning products used. The older Thinkpads with the hard black plastic never suffered from this issue. I'm really looking forward to the bare aluminum of the FW13.
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Any idea if you still have to go through this if you swap out the AMD wireless card for the Intel AX210 before installing Windows?
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There was a good deal on 32GB of Crucial RAM ($65-$72 depending on store) but it was sold out everywhere by Sunday. The only other deals I've seen are at NewEgg, which has some discounts on the G-Skill 64GB kits (CL40 for $175 and CL46 for around $163). Otherwise all the decent RAM discounts have been for configurations other than DDR5 5600Mhz.
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Ah, reminds me of the Thinkpads of old -- external batteries, ultrabay that could hold another battery or whatever else you need, swapping drives, wireless cards, etc. and finding that perfect keyboard from the best of the 2-3 manufacturers they used. I also remember hunting down the last T-series they made with a 4:3 screen (the T61)
I see a lot of anecdotal comments about users' past or present Thinkpads on this sub so I'm curious how many FW13 buyers have come from a Thinkpad or have a Thinkpad as a second machine and how many have migrated from other brands. I see the appeal of Framework for the old-school Thinkpad tinkerer. The FW13 will be the first non-Thinkpad I've owned since the old 570 back in the 1990s (although, granted, I've always been able to get EPP pricing on Thinkpads, which has influenced by purchases). My other laptop is a Gen4 Thinkpad P1, which is too big and power hungry to really be a good travel machine, but I will probably replace it with another powerful Thinkpad P-series laptop sometime in the next year for all the editing I do at home. [View Poll](https://www.reddit.com/poll/184o8oc)
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I can't see how a charger can fail because of what it's charging, especially if it has plenty of headroom (a Framework 13 is designed for a 65W charger). More likely to fail because it's either a lemon or the electrical outlet is bad in some way, so I call bad luck on the Anker and perhaps predictable luck on the rando brand.
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It's Gen3 and also a DRAM-less drive so will choke a bit with sustained writes. The 4TB Teamgroup MP34 is the same price and is IMO a better SSD.
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The bigger problem is that I never seem to be able to get superglue to actually stick things together. Literally everything I've used it on has come unstuck. Skin seems to be the only thing I can reliably stick with superglue. When it comes to gluing plastic or metal I always use an epoxy, which can get messy.
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Does RAM quantity really impact power consumption in any meaningful way? I'm curious because that crossed my mind after I missed the crucial 32GB deal and opted instead for 64GB from GSkill. My SSD will be a Hynix P31 so I'll save some battery life there at least
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Such a popular price that the 32GB kit is now sold out everywhere in the US (including the Crucial site)
Folks here have recommended the G-Skill RAM with CL40 for the AMD boards, but I'm curious if anyone's tried the slightly slower version with CL46 -- the 64GB kit (F5-5600S4645A32GX2-RS) is currently available for $163 vs. $175 for the faster kit. Or am I missing some compatibility issue?
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That's concerning. I did read that the Zen 4 Ryzen chips didn't really improve on the Zen 3 ones in terms of battery life, but 4 hours is pretty terrible even for the last gen Ryzens chips. I can do better even with my pre-Evo Intel power-sucking 16" Lenovo workstation!
Some thoughts: are you sure Windows and/or antivirus is not doing something in the background in terms of updates or scanning? What level brightness is your screen at? And what do you define as "light usage"?
Is it worth spending another $25 for an Intel AX210 WiFi card, or is the Mediatek card actually not so bad after all? Opinions seem to be mixed here, but many also seem based on conjecture so I'm curious if anyone has real world experience of the two in terms of connection stability (wifi and BT) and signal strength/range. Also curious if using an Intel card on the Ryzen board will end up being more power hungry. My only experience with a Mediatek wifi card was many years ago in a Thinkpad and it was a terrible experience -- constant disconnects. I suspect those bad old days are long gone though.
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Does the bios still only allow you to dedicate a maximum of 2GB to the iGPU? From what I’ve read, the Radeon 780m can have up to 8GB allocated, but it doesn’t sound like that’s an option with the Framework for some reason. Anyone know why?
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I'm not a huge fan of the 3:2 screen, mainly because it makes the laptop relatively large (deep) for a 13.5-incher and kinda kills some of the portability factor. I'd much prefer a 16:10 screen. Definitely not a 16:9 screen though -- those are hopefully soon to be consigned to the annals of history.
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Looks like G.Skill sells two versions of that 64GB kit, one with a latency of 40 and one with 46 (specs seem identical otherwise). The faster one is on sale for $175 at Newegg and the other is $163, which seems like a pretty good price
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I'm now seeing $72. Gotta love Amazon and its yo-yo prices.
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Apple hardware is unquestionable superior to anything made by other PC makers IMO, but it locks you into the Mac ecosystem which is a deal killer for me. Doesn’t stop me being supremely jealous of the M3 power, overall design, and battery life of the latest Macbooks though!
So although I will potentially have a 2TB 970 Evo Plus spare in a few months for my new FW13 (whenever that comes) I am still considering buying a new 2TB drive to eke out a bit more battery life and generate less heat compared to the Evo Plus. Also wanted to take advantage of the current low SSD prices that have probably bottomed out (although I thought that 6 months ago, too... go figure). I'm not sure even Black Friday deals will better some current prices since these days so many Black Friday "sales" are artificial and based on prices that crept up in the prior weeks. Still, I can also return anything I do buy if a better deal does come up later this month. So with three factors in mind (in order of priority: battery life, heat, speed) what would you choose from the following previous- and current-generation 2TB drives that are currently available for under $130: SK Hynix P31, SK Hynix P41, Samsung 980 Pro, Samsung 990 Pro I'm strongly considering the Hynix P31 or the 980 Pro since they'll probably run cooler that the newest generation, be plenty fast enough, and be more power efficient (especially the Hynix). What the Samsung has going for it over the Hynix is speed and on-chip encryption, but I have an OEM version of that drive as the boot drive in my current Thinkpad and it tends to run hotter than I expected.
Just saw the official list of [RAM validated for the FW13 Ryzen](https://knowledgebase.frame.work/what-ram-memory-is-supported-in-framework-laptop-13-ryzen-7040-series-B1M60foth) builds and it seems a bit limited so I'm curious if people have run into any issues using non-validated RAM. I'm particularly curious about the Crucial option (aka Micron) which seems to be listed as only "limited validation". Sounds like folks here have had no problems with it, and Crucial is usually my go-to for all RAM needs.
I'm considering a Framework 13 for my second, travel laptop (it'll be my first non-Thinkpad laptop since the 1990s) but still have some nagging doubts and am curious if others have grappled with any of them. I generally keep laptops for 2-3 years before selling my old one and buying a new one so none of my laptops have ever ended up in landfill by my hand, at least. First doubt is about the whole Framework business model thing, not least because the company is private and thus a bit of a mystery in terms of financing, burn rate, longevity etc. Basically, if I buy a Framework laptop now, will the company still be around in 2-3 years when I'd consider a CPU update and still supporting current models? Second is whether I want to buy a laptop that's such a basic clamshell design when all other manufacturers are constantly bringing some interesting new design options to the table. Sure, it's fine now, but in 2-3 years will I want a 2-in-1 or a smaller footprint or different screen ratio etc.? Looking back at my Thinkpad purchases, I did stick with 14" T-series for quite a while (T20 onwards), but those evolved in terms of size/shape, and since I shook my T-series addiction I've tried all sorts of different sizes and shapes (currently typing this on a P1 Gen 4). And finally there's the price, which TBH is on the high side even with me bringing my own RAM, using an older Gen3 SSD I have, using a 60W charger I already have etc. Even the new Main Boards/CPUs are pretty darn expensive if you want anything higher end. This is especially pertinent with BF coming up when all the major manufacturers will no doubt be offering big discounts on current models (some already are). It seems to be the USP of Framework is the lower e-waste thing because otherwise it's just another mid-range 13" laptop in a crowded field. TBH I'd be more impressed if Framework offered to take back replaced components for recycling, otherwise upgrading stuff just generates its own potential e-waste, albeit much less than binning a whole laptop. Ultimately I'll probably buy a Framework 13 -- curiosity about new toys and memories of rummaging around in the internals of Thinkpads of Yore are just too strong to overcome! But I'm still curious about other folks' motivations.