We’re excited to announce the new Framework Laptop 16, now with AMD Ryzen™ AI 300 Series processors and a graphics upgrade to NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 5070 Laptop GPU!
The more impressive thing is that they managed to get the Nvidia upgrade to be backwards compatible with existing Framework 16 models.
That’s the push I need to really, truly believe they’re committed to the goal of upgradablity. Too many “modular” products have come out where the “upgraded” modules were only available if you bought the newest version of the base product.
In the next year or so, I’ll probably be buying a new laptop, and this has convinced me that Framework is probably the way to go.
I’ve been rocking a Framework 16 for about a year now and would happily recommend it. It’s a bit more upfront, but I love knowing that I can fix or replace just about anything on it (pretty affordably too). It’s just so refreshing to not have to worry about dumb shit like an obscure power adapter or port forcing my laptop into an early retirement.
It’s not the lightest laptop I’ve ever had, but realistically not all that much different from my last gaming laptop. Now that I’m not a full time student anymore I could probably get away with one of the smaller models, but the form factor is pretty nice.
i’ve had a framework 13 from a time before there was any other type of framework, and it’s a great laptop honestly. ive yet to do big upgrades, but just being able to repair it myself is awesome. one time i dented the chassis around where the power button was. no worries, just changed the input cover and bam 5 minutes later it’s like new.
my only complaint is that the battery life is atrocious. i heard it’s better (but still not great) on newer models tho
I’ve got an HX 370 one and aside the battery, the only other complaint is the screen, max brightness isn’t much and I miss my previous laptop’s touch screen
I have a 7840U with a 55HWr battery. I can squeeze out 7 hours. If I’m power using then 5-6 is typical. With the 63WHr battery, you’ll get about 15% more time with it.
I have two Intel frameworks, and they both suck in regards to battery life
Buuut, I just have a big power bank in my backpack. Gives me at least 1 full charge when I’m on the go. And at home I just have a lighter laptop due to smaller battery
The only thing that pisses me off about framework, is their abysmal software and communication in that regard. It’s basically impossible to get them to acknowledge or fix problems in their firmware
Out of curiosity, what cpu? I had an i5-1135g7 laptop that I motherboard swapped with a Ryzen 7 5825U motherboard. The battery life on the i5 was atrocious. I got 2 hours out of it doing note taking. Maybe 3 when new and I had the full battery capacity to work with. After the motherboard swap, I got basically double the battery life in the same conditions.
(HP pavilion 15-eg050wm and then I put a 15-eh2085cl motherboard in it)
both get maybe 3 hours if I’m lucky. Although they are a couple years old now. Fresh battery got me maybe 4 when lucky.
I have a 25k power bank, so I can extend the runtime quite a bit. The “at least once” above is quite conservative. it’s probably closer to 2. and that includes using it while charging.
I heard the ryzens are a lot better regarding power, so it doesn’t surprise me that the runtime basically doubles
I’d recommend disabling boost and setting cooling to passive.
On windows, if you set maximum processor usage to 99% in advanced power plan settings, it will disable boost. You can set the cooling policy as well. Also repasting is probably beneficial. The more efficient your cooling system is, the less fan usage it will need and you’ll get better battery life as a result.
That’s what I noticed on the i5 laptop, it would kick on the fans doing basically nothing and would kill battery. When the fans were off, the estimates were higher. Also maybe disabling the P cores in both machines might be beneficial.
Mainly due to quite shoddy firmware code that controls the charging. Which causes wild battery flipping behavior even when using a powerful charger. It’s a long known issue, and FW is annoyingly quiet on the problem. It’s the reason I’m annoyed by their software issue communication handling
The only downside I have seen is that GSYNC will not work. The newer display supports it, put anyone upgrading an older Framework 16 with the new NVIDIA card will have to buy the screen upgrade as well if they need GSYNC.
Yeah, but the old display supports VRR via VESA Adaptive-Sync. Nvidia supports that as well, but not sure if their mobile GPUs don’t for built-in displays?
If it is supported, I don’t see any advantage of having Gsync vs. standard VRR.
If not that’s a shame. Pretty wasteful having to buy the same display with different firmware just to get adaptive sync working.
Yeah it pushed me to finally put in an order, got to wait till December now as I’m in the third batch.
I wanted to wait till we had proof thst the graphics card would be updatable and a better one would be available as their AMD card is a bit too lightweight for me.
I would rather it had been a better AMD card, I have a 7900 xtx in my desktop, but i will take what I can get at this point, especially as I know I can upgrade later.
The more impressive thing is that they managed to get the Nvidia upgrade to be backwards compatible with existing Framework 16 models.
That’s the push I need to really, truly believe they’re committed to the goal of upgradablity. Too many “modular” products have come out where the “upgraded” modules were only available if you bought the newest version of the base product.
In the next year or so, I’ll probably be buying a new laptop, and this has convinced me that Framework is probably the way to go.
I’ve been rocking a Framework 16 for about a year now and would happily recommend it. It’s a bit more upfront, but I love knowing that I can fix or replace just about anything on it (pretty affordably too). It’s just so refreshing to not have to worry about dumb shit like an obscure power adapter or port forcing my laptop into an early retirement.
It’s not the lightest laptop I’ve ever had, but realistically not all that much different from my last gaming laptop. Now that I’m not a full time student anymore I could probably get away with one of the smaller models, but the form factor is pretty nice.
Overall, no major complaints!
i’ve had a framework 13 from a time before there was any other type of framework, and it’s a great laptop honestly. ive yet to do big upgrades, but just being able to repair it myself is awesome. one time i dented the chassis around where the power button was. no worries, just changed the input cover and bam 5 minutes later it’s like new.
my only complaint is that the battery life is atrocious. i heard it’s better (but still not great) on newer models tho
I have a newer gen 13 and yeah battery life is mediocre. I love literally everything else about it though so it’s ok.
I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t near an outlet though tbh.
I’ve got an HX 370 one and aside the battery, the only other complaint is the screen, max brightness isn’t much and I miss my previous laptop’s touch screen
I have a 7840U with a 55HWr battery. I can squeeze out 7 hours. If I’m power using then 5-6 is typical. With the 63WHr battery, you’ll get about 15% more time with it.
yea, that’s what i meant when talking about newer gens being better
i have a i5-1240P (with 55WHr battery) and im lucky to get 5 hours while on power saver reading PDFs
I have two Intel frameworks, and they both suck in regards to battery life
Buuut, I just have a big power bank in my backpack. Gives me at least 1 full charge when I’m on the go. And at home I just have a lighter laptop due to smaller battery
The only thing that pisses me off about framework, is their abysmal software and communication in that regard. It’s basically impossible to get them to acknowledge or fix problems in their firmware
Out of curiosity, what cpu? I had an i5-1135g7 laptop that I motherboard swapped with a Ryzen 7 5825U motherboard. The battery life on the i5 was atrocious. I got 2 hours out of it doing note taking. Maybe 3 when new and I had the full battery capacity to work with. After the motherboard swap, I got basically double the battery life in the same conditions.
(HP pavilion 15-eg050wm and then I put a 15-eh2085cl motherboard in it)
i5-1340P and i7-1260P
Both FW13
both get maybe 3 hours if I’m lucky. Although they are a couple years old now. Fresh battery got me maybe 4 when lucky.
I have a 25k power bank, so I can extend the runtime quite a bit. The “at least once” above is quite conservative. it’s probably closer to 2. and that includes using it while charging.
I heard the ryzens are a lot better regarding power, so it doesn’t surprise me that the runtime basically doubles
I’d recommend disabling boost and setting cooling to passive.
On windows, if you set maximum processor usage to 99% in advanced power plan settings, it will disable boost. You can set the cooling policy as well. Also repasting is probably beneficial. The more efficient your cooling system is, the less fan usage it will need and you’ll get better battery life as a result.
That’s what I noticed on the i5 laptop, it would kick on the fans doing basically nothing and would kill battery. When the fans were off, the estimates were higher. Also maybe disabling the P cores in both machines might be beneficial.
yup, I already have boosting disabled.
Mainly due to quite shoddy firmware code that controls the charging. Which causes wild battery flipping behavior even when using a powerful charger. It’s a long known issue, and FW is annoyingly quiet on the problem. It’s the reason I’m annoyed by their software issue communication handling
Ooof. Only time I had that issue was when I used a 35 watt laptop adapter with my old HP laptop. It wanted a 65 or 90 watt adapter.
The only downside I have seen is that GSYNC will not work. The newer display supports it, put anyone upgrading an older Framework 16 with the new NVIDIA card will have to buy the screen upgrade as well if they need GSYNC.
That’s not unexpected. Variable refresh rate (GSYNC and Freesync) has always needed the display to support it first.
Yeah, but the old display supports VRR via VESA Adaptive-Sync. Nvidia supports that as well, but not sure if their mobile GPUs don’t for built-in displays?
If it is supported, I don’t see any advantage of having Gsync vs. standard VRR.
If not that’s a shame. Pretty wasteful having to buy the same display with different firmware just to get adaptive sync working.
Will freesync work with it?
Nowadays they’re the same thing. Nvidia uses a different name because they like appropriating things, I guess.
They are not the same thing. GSYNC requires the monitor to be embedded with an NVIDIA controller.
It does not. You’re talking about the original version GSYNC which required a hw module. That’s no longer the case.
Yeah it pushed me to finally put in an order, got to wait till December now as I’m in the third batch.
I wanted to wait till we had proof thst the graphics card would be updatable and a better one would be available as their AMD card is a bit too lightweight for me.
I would rather it had been a better AMD card, I have a 7900 xtx in my desktop, but i will take what I can get at this point, especially as I know I can upgrade later.