Framework Laptop 13 gets ARM processor with 12 cores via third-party upgrade kit
47 points by hoistbypetard
47 points by hoistbypetard
While Framework itself only offers Intel and AMD CPUs, a mainboard with a high-performance ARM processor from a third-party manufacturer has now launched.
Framework has a risc-v board too from deepcomputing! It’s fun to play with, but geared toward risc-v experimentation and definitely not intended for daily use. That one has 8g ram soldered onboard, but you can get 32/64 from deepcomputing directly.
I’m a huge fan of framework laptops and I love that ARM is available now too!
Pretty cool to see third party products geared towards framework! Would be really cool to see a healthy ecosystem around laptop customization slowly build up around frameworks products, maybe even to the point it becomes a (de facto or actual) standard!
Absolutely. I was sold on framework laptops until I got my hands on one and was able to swap out parts. Now I’m a fan. I’d love to see framework turn into thriving ecosystem if not a defacto-standard of sorts. I have a stack of old laptops destined for recycling. I’d like to reduce that waste in the future.
I’ll also point out the coolmaster case (print or buy) that you can use to run a mainboard without a laptop. Handy if you want to swap one out but don’t want to get rid of it yet
The CIX CD8180 needs more time in the oven linux-wise. Currently you need vendor-provided linux images to get everything to work correctly, and the chip draws about the same at idle as my entire laptop.
Still exciting that companies are targeting the framework motherboard as a form factor. All we need now is for companies to start making laptops that accept a framework motherboard.
Your entire laptop consumes way too much at idle! Unless you meant "your entire laptop at load".
Yeah, these CIX chips I don't think were intended for battery-powered applications at all, they might not even have very granular power management at the hardware level (?)
Oops. Yeah whatever my laptop was doing at that time. Almost 3 times the power of my laptop at idle!
I can't tell for certain, but it looks like maybe the RAM and SSD are soldered to the upgrade kit? That seems like an odd choice for this specific laptop.
same was done for the official RISC-V board, its most likely done this way to prevent incompatibilities.
Both of which are 3rd party boards. I find it encouraging that there seems to be an ecosystem building products around the 13" (at least) that don't come from Frame.work itself.
I keep hoping someone will do a 1U 13" Mainboard adaptor for a short depth 1u case. No hurry as I am not upgrading for a while (but my keyboard's left control key has started flaking off so it's starting to show it's age :) ).
I know about this one too :) I have never printed anything and while I have a printer but I've mis-placed the damn MicroSD card. A bit leery of using plastic for it too.
I have 3 of them in my rack at home. I used a temperature resistant PETG (Colorfabb HT), which seems to have been working fine for all my PC / server parts that I’ve printed so far. The case is a bit annoying to work with (lots of unscrewing things to get to the board if you need to). The board takes air from the bottom and expels it from the front, so it’s a bit weird in a rack, and you really need to leave at least 1U underneath for air intake. I did also have to zip tie a noctua to my 11th gen intel board to get it’s temps to somewhere reasonable. With all that said though, the case and mount works, and my old laptop boards are all happily living a new life as kubernetes nodes in my rack so I’m happy with it, and very grateful to the designer of the mount.
My dream setup would be to have a 3/4U unit where I can mount the boards in some kind of blade configuration, but it’s also a little tricky regarding airflow. Perhaps I’ll get round to it one day…
Thanks. I knew there was a high temp plastic to print with but couldn't remember which one. I imagine it needs a special print nozzle?
You don't need no 1U
:) Yep, I know about the Cooler Master case but I do want 1U to fit in the last spare slot on my tiny (19") 6U rack.
It can't be that hard to find a 25-30 year old Pentium Pro/II/III (or SPARC etc) 1U server going for free, to reuse the box.
You mis-understand. It's not the case but rather it's a mounting adaptor for the Mainboard that is needed.
There is one but for uAtx but I would need a Mini-ITX MB adaptor for my short depth (< ~11inches) rack. I do also realise the 13" MB wider than Mini-ITX but that should be okay. I'll probably just get the Cooler master case and an extra shelf, but it won't be as nice.
I'd just get a Framework desktop MB but it seems (for cooler clearance) to need >2u.
I wonder what the thermal performance and battery life are like. This is maybe something I get for myself for my birthday.
I will do you a favor. In the German version of the article it says:
Wirklich interessant dürfte dieses Mainboard-Upgrade vor allem für Entwickler sein, denn wie erste Tests des Chips zeigen, verbraucht dieser schon im Idle-Betrieb rund 16 Watt, womit die Akkulaufzeit in Verbindung mit dem 55 Wh Akku des Framework Laptop 13 relativ kurz ausfallen dürfte.
It says that this chip draws 16W in idle, so battery live will not be great with a 55Wh battery.
I don't know why they removed that info from the English translation.
I wonder if they meant 1.6W. 16W is abysmal.
It is common for Arm and RISC-V SoCs to have idle and maximum power draws that are not very different. The maximum is typically so low that it's not a problem and it costs a lot of time and effort to add effective clock gating and so forth -- frequency scaling is easier but gives less benefit, especially as process nodes get smaller and leakage dominates.
Heck, it's only in the last couple of generations that Intel has paid serious attention to lowering idle power. Their 8th gen was not too bad -- I had an i7-8650U NUC that idled at 6W and was around 30W max -- the Skylake ones were maybe twice higher. But it was only with 12th gen and later they got really quite good. especially at high core counts e.g. i9-1{3,4}900HX.
I'm guessing the English version was updated, it now says:
Either way, this mainboard upgrade might only be interesting for developers for the most part, because early tests show that the SoC already draws about 16 watts at idle, which means battery life will likely be fairly short when combined with the 55Wh battery of the Framework Laptop 13.
Either way, this mainboard upgrade might only be interesting for developers for the most part, because early tests show that the SoC already draws about 16 watts at idle…
I plan to pick this up out of curiosity, definitely not a daily driver, but fun to tinker with. I’ve got the risc-v board, the fan kicks on with moderate use, I’d expect the same with this one.
The article notes it's the same chipset as the Minisforum MS-R1. Which for $509 gets you 32GB of RAM and something that can boot Debian 12 via UEFI. That's all very encouraging for a general purpose ARM computer.
Link for those similarly curious https://www.minisforum.com/products/ms-r1 (the image carousel doesn't work due to some jQuery bug; they evidently spent all of their JavaScript tokens on the snow effect on their store page where the images do work)
I'm really looking forward to switching my Linux laptops to ARM in the coming years. (I already use ARM servers and obviously ARM is working great for windows/mac laptops.) But the whole transition is taking longer than I anticipated. In the x86 world I'm used to buying any CPU and just assuming that the kernel will work fine, but that's definitely not the case for these ARM SoCs. I'm also concerned about various software issues (e.g., Chrome isn't packaged for linux/arm64).
I had been holding out to make an ARM switch but earlier this year I faced the reality that it's going to be a while and I just bought an Intel Framework 13. Love this thing. Maybe in 2030 Framework will sell me an ARM machine...