[HN Gopher] Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive: 180W Power Adapter
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Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive: 180W Power Adapter
Author : pimterry
Score : 147 points
Date : 2023-06-08 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (frame.work)
(TXT) w3m dump (frame.work)
| kayson wrote:
| Are there other laptops/chargers out there that support USB PD
| 3.1 EPR? Curious how those efficiencies compare.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| The latest Macbook 140W charger is USB PD EPR; It's not 180W,
| but it's one of the first running EPR.
|
| It appears the Macbook charger gets about ~93% efficiency at
| ~100W load, and 87% efficiency at ~27W load. No metrics on the
| 140W charging I can find, though.
| staticfish wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/19/22734233/apple-140w-macb...
|
| MBP 16 inch in 2021 was apparently the first PD 3.1 apple
| charger
| betimsl wrote:
| Holy moly; 180? Sufficient to power an entire house, my God.
| geoffeg wrote:
| You must have a _very_ efficient house.
| betimsl wrote:
| Actually I do. I have two solar panels, 60W usbc power brick
| for my laptop and phone. And a small light...it was a joke.
| OK? Why on the defense? :)
| acomjean wrote:
| we need a sarcasm tag/symbol.. That would be super useful.
| I honestly can't tell tone anymore.
| xxs wrote:
| if "my God" part wasn't evident, and you need a mark for
| sarcasm/joke/take the piss... I guess that part is beyond
| help
| betimsl wrote:
| I would not say we need tag or symbol. First of all it
| was not sarcasm at all, just a plain joke. And second,
| instead of a symbol, what we need is to read more books.
| [deleted]
| megous wrote:
| That's still 12W to get rid of from a small enclosed space. I
| wouldn't want to operate this at peak power all the time. And
| SMPS don't usually have peak efficiency at rated output power.
|
| Do these things re-negotiate power contract, or will they just go
| into thermal shutdown when overheated?
| LoganDark wrote:
| Wait, this isn't a deep dive at all, this is just an ad.
|
| (Is this a deep dive for the laptop itself or a deep dive for the
| adapter? I can't tell.)
| TOGoS wrote:
| I guess a deep dive would have had to get into more gritty
| details about USB-PD? Or maybe show how they crammed all the
| requisite capacitors and heat dissipators into the thing.
|
| It did answer my question, though, which was "how do they pull
| that much power over a USB-C cable?" A: USB PD 3.1 allows up to
| 48V * 5A to be supplied so long as the cable has the right
| e-marker on it.
|
| Though honestly, I would be careful trying to get deeper than
| that. The USB standard has become a bit of a spaghetti mess.
| Unless you are building your own equipment or trying to daisy-
| chain some DisplayPort stuff through some Thunderbolt 3 hubs
| you're probably better off thinking of it as `capabilities(USB
| network) = min(capabilities(computer), capabilities(cable),
| capabilitieS(hub))` and then dropping 50$ for a nice cable that
| you can brag to your friends about ("ALL MY POWER, PERIPHERALS,
| AND VIDEO OVER THIS ONE [insanely overengineered] WIRE
| WOOHOOQ")
|
| Anyway, my two cents are that I'm glad they kept the new power
| brick mostly-the-same-dimensions as the old ones so that my
| 3D-printed gridbeam-mountable power brick holders[1] continue
| to work.
|
| [1] https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5400078
| LoganDark wrote:
| > I guess a deep dive would have had to get into more gritty
| details about USB-PD? Or maybe show how they crammed all the
| requisite capacitors and heat dissipators into the thing.
|
| I personally went in with the expectation of seeing the PCB
| inside the adapter, but they don't even show that. :(
| [deleted]
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Yeah this is not anywhere close to a 'deep dive'. Surprised
| Framework would editorialize the title so much, not a good
| sign.
| flakiness wrote:
| Related threads:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35277660 "Framework
| announces AMD, new Intel gen, 16" laptop and more"
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35286544 "Framework Laptop
| 16"
| jeron wrote:
| there's some guerilla marketing going on with Framework, I see
| posts on Framework on front page of HN every few days and I
| think everyone's tolerating it because we all support
| Framework's goal. But this is effectively advertisements at
| this point
| ranger207 wrote:
| Advertisements? On hackernews? Perish the thought
| Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
| I am one of the people that posted a Framework announcement
| in the past. I do have a Framework laptop, but no relation to
| the company other than being a customer.
|
| I posted the announcement because I follow Framework pretty
| closely, and figured other people might be interested in a
| company that works in a direction opposed to the mainstream
| manufacturers. It's Hacker News after all.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Or, and hold your horses here, because so many people support
| Framework here we see so many posts about it.
| Topfi wrote:
| Maybe I am missing something, but the Framework focused posts
| I have seen seem to mostly come from long active accounts by
| actual community members. Think this is more simply a case of
| the product being interesting to the people on here.
|
| Framework isn't even engaging in any tactics that may help to
| get more attention organically, like Cloudflare when they
| group a lot of releases into a very small window to dominate
| the frontpage.
| bityard wrote:
| Some of us are just really excited about a laptop which is
| intentionally built for upgrades, repairs, and re-usability.
|
| The current trend of the household name manufacturers is to
| solder and glue as many components together as possible,
| meaning if one thing inside goes ka-plooey outside the
| warranty then the whole unit is shot, forcing you to buy
| another. They say their goal is to get their products thinner
| and thinner (for some reason) but of course we all know the
| likely real reason is designed obsolescence.
|
| Edit: I don't own a Framework laptop yet, but the 16 is near
| the top of the list of contenders when I upgrade within the
| next year or so.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Yeah I think the 16's will be very popular. Do you know if
| the Ethernet adapter still sticks out past the edge of the
| unit?
| robocat wrote:
| > designed obsolescence
|
| I am old enough to remember "reseating" memory to fix
| faults. Connectors fail, often disgustingly intermittently.
| Solder is used for reliability, performance and price
| reduction: I think most people prefer those attributes
| versus upgradability (although nice to get choice with
| Framework!). Connectors now limit performance: there's a
| reason why the highest performance memory does not use
| pluggable formats. HBM2. Remember when cache was a seperate
| stick of SRAM memory?
|
| The majority of PCs were never upgraded, even if they could
| be. I know, because I would do it for non-technical friends
| back-in-the-day and eek a couple of years of extra life out
| of a PC: however without my free labour (and usually
| trickle-down free parts) those friends would just buy a new
| PC and be happy. Upgrades are mostly for geeks.
|
| Meanwhile good hardware (phones, laptops) is often becoming
| obsolete due to lack of software upgrades, not lack of
| grunt. I just bought a new iPad because of this. A friend's
| MacBook Air: working fine but needed new battery and no
| more MacOS upgrades. But also they wanted a new device with
| a better screen since they spend many hours a day on it, so
| less value in upgradeability?
|
| Yeah, batteries. I haven't seen a good cost-benefit
| analysis of sealed devices. Modern batteries now seem to
| outlive the device, which wasn't the case 10 years ago with
| iPhone6. Certainly I appreciate sealed mobile phones that
| don't die from water damage.
| dheera wrote:
| "while also outputting enough power to handle the Graphics Module
| with a discrete GPU"
|
| Oh? This is news to me. Will it have an nVidia graphics card?
| vhodges wrote:
| the 16" will have a slot for discrete cards (I don't think it
| will be a PCIe slot but could be wrong).
| bityard wrote:
| No need to wonder or guess, according to The Horse's
| Mouth[0], the expansion bays in the 16 will have a PCIe x8
| interface. (Not to be confused with the expansion cards from
| the Framework 13.)
|
| [0]: https://frame.work/blog/introducing-the-framework-
| laptop-16
| vhodges wrote:
| Thanks, I remember seeing that, but wasn't sure of the form
| factor (eg I am not sure you'll be able to plugin any old
| gpu).
| starkparker wrote:
| It's not a desktop PCIe slot on the back of a laptop, but
| the interface is already documented. The electrical,
| shell-fit PCB, and general form-factor specs of the 16"
| laptop's expansion bay are already published under a CC-
| BY license by Framework:
| https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionBay
|
| Direct link to the pinout PDF: https://github.com/Framewo
| rkComputer/ExpansionBay/blob/main/...
|
| It's a 4th-gen x8 interface, so there are limits to what
| "any old GPU" might be capable of performance-wise, but
| creating a passthrough-port accessory seems possible.
| vhodges wrote:
| Thanks, I had forgotten they had published specs. Note
| with Thunderbolt and a eGPU chassis, you can get the
| adaptor interace today. I was considering this to
| repurpose an older machines GPU for my 12thgen 13", but
| decided instead to turn the older machine into a Steambox
| instead.
| deepsun wrote:
| I don't understand why they don't put two or three USB-C ports to
| the charger. It could serve as universal charger for other
| devices as well.
| wmf wrote:
| Obviously that would cost more. Anker sells that BTW.
| hinkley wrote:
| Apple has a couple models with 2 ports now but none of them
| are particularly beefy. One is only 35 watts, which means
| it's basically saving you from routing a whole bunch of
| current into your Air and out the other side to charge your
| giant cellphone.
| londons_explore wrote:
| So why didn't this support the 240 watt mode (ie. 48v 5 amps)?
|
| I can't really envision any standard component choices which
| would support 36 volts and yet not support 48 volts...
| foxbyte wrote:
| The inclusion of GaN technology in Framework's new 180W adapter
| is a game-changer. GaN's superior power efficiency and ability to
| sustain higher voltages translate to smaller, more efficient
| charging . Great to see tech reducing waste and improving
| performance!
| megous wrote:
| We don't know how efficient this is. Single number given in the
| article doesn't mean anything. SMPS come with an efficiency
| curve over the whole range of provided power. It can be 70%
| efficient at 20W or 85% at 180W and 93% only at 70W. Complete
| information was not provided by the article.
|
| And USB-C supplies can also switch voltages, so the efficiency
| will also depend on the voltage (both input and ouput, as this
| can probably be used in both 110V and 230V grids)...
|
| It's just marketing... "up to 93%" :)
| hinkley wrote:
| I've gotten sucked into videos of making low-power low-noise
| rack mount servers for home offices lately and that's come up
| a couple times. Yeah you have a PSU that's 90% efficient
| under load, and stays above 80% over a reasonable range of
| power levels, but some of them are pretty bad when you get
| down to 40 watts.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I happen to have a 180W adapter that came with my 2020
| laptop.
|
| Crude measurements with a ruler indicate that Framework's
| unit is approximately 23% smaller by volume.
|
| I don't know how far this field moved forward over the past
| three years, but I see this as a win - mine is especially
| annoying to handle due to its length - ~150mm.
|
| Would love to know something about the weight, because that
| thing is a brick, which for this reason I don't normally take
| along with me on trips and opt for the 60W USB-C charger
| instead.
| yftsui wrote:
| Exactly, the mentioned components used are not impressive if
| at all. Guess what, almost all named brand laptop power
| supply has an Onsemi chip, the only difference is big
| manufacturers like Delta or Flextronics use customized Onsemi
| chips made for them.
|
| What made it even more interesting is mentioning Weltrend in
| a marketing material, almost 50% of projects I used to work
| on include a cost down part to switch from TI chips to
| Weltrend or similar. Whoever wrote this material doesn't
| understand what they really implies.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| I can't read and not think of WE GAAN
| _joel wrote:
| Generative Adversarial Networks nis my first thought
| saltysalt wrote:
| I am very happy with my Framework laptop, and love their vision
| of modular design and upgrades.
| levitate wrote:
| Framework's modular design has been advertised as a solution to
| upgradability, which is huge, but I see the real strength in
| being able to have a GPU plugged in when I'm using my laptop at
| home, and swapping it out for an extra battery when I'm using my
| laptop away from an outlet.
|
| Being able to transform the capabilities of the laptop based on
| your situation is a huge game changer.
| danShumway wrote:
| How hard is that to do? I know Frameworks are repairable, but
| you can really do a swap like that completely on the fly?
|
| Honestly, this comment is a somewhat decent sales hook for me;
| I've been thinking about getting a Framework for my next laptop
| whenever the current one I use really starts to fail (depending
| on how their AMD stuff works out), and this comment makes me
| more curious to look into them.
| pitaj wrote:
| I think we'll have to wait and see whether these are hot-
| pluggable.
| pimterry wrote:
| I don't think anybody outside Framework knows for sure yet
| (maybe not even internally) but my impression from what
| they've shared so far is that the expansion bays are intended
| to be very easily swappable (external, a click & push like
| the expansion slots) but almost certainly not hot-swappable
| while the machine is powered on.
|
| They do have some initial specs at
| https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionBay that
| somebody more knowledgeable than me might be able to glean
| some practical info from.
| mfenniak wrote:
| It looks really easy in their product preview:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km3MVZ8HZeY
| stavros wrote:
| I don't know about the GPU, but in general, you unscrew five
| screws, lift up the magnetic lid/keyboard, and you have
| access to all the internals. I imagine that swapping the GPU
| is as easy as undoing one more screw.
|
| Removing the battery is a cable and a few screws, for
| example. Everything is very accessible.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| From what I've seen the GPU add-on is not an internal
| component (within the laptop's case) but similar to
| swappable batteries on oldschool laptops, slotted into a
| port on the back. It makes the laptop larger just like
| extra large batteries on Thinkpads.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Hopefully they use some crazy hard screws so the heads
| don't strip with repeated use. (I don't know much about
| Framework... yet)
| stavros wrote:
| No, they're built to unscrew easily, and they're captive,
| so you can't even lose them.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| My first "real" laptop was a beast of a Dell workstation-class
| laptop in 2005. One of its key features for me was being able
| to swap out the CD drive for an extra battery.
|
| Of course, by modern standards the thing weighed a ton. These
| days, my 15" MBP feels like a brick in my bike bag, and it's
| likely 30-50% lighter!
|
| (Oh and fun fact: recently I wanted to test out Moore's Law,
| and see how the RasPi 4 compared to that Core Duo laptop (that
| I still have!) Well, the 18y-old laptop still handily beat out
| the RasPi4 in single-CPU performance! Moore's law can't quite
| make up for opposite market segments)
| thx-2718 wrote:
| "(Oh and fun fact: recently I wanted to test out Moore's Law,
| and see how the RasPi 4 compared to that Core Duo laptop
| (that I still have!) Well, the 18y-old laptop still handily
| beat out the RasPi4 in single-CPU performance! Moore's law
| can't quite make up for opposite market segments)"
|
| shouldn't power consumption also be a factor in comparing
| performance?
|
| I would think an ARM would use less wattage than a Core 2
| Duo.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Certainly, in a MIPS/W or MIPS/$, the RasPi beats the pants
| off the old laptop (Edit: which I now remember was a Dell
| Precision M65, which specs say weighed 2.81kg (6.2lb)
| (likely without extra battery), whereas my current MBP M1
| Pro is 1.6 kg (3.5 lbs) so more than half as heavy!)
|
| But I had the mistaken assumption that 15+ years of Moore's
| Law would certainly leave the old laptop in the dust, in
| the same way that "modern smartphone more powerful than an
| old supercomputer". It was interesting to be corrected!
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I have a 2008 Dell workstation laptop (M4400) that had the
| swappable bays feature that I bought used around 2012 and
| used as my primary machine for several years (which as an
| aside, worked so, so much better than buying a brand new
| machine for the same price would've).
|
| In my case I swapped the optical bay for a SATA bay which
| enabled quick swapping of SATA drives. For my usage at that
| point in time that ability was very handy... perfectly
| possible with an external USB gadget of course, but it was
| nice to have that _without_ the cables and gadget. Most of
| the time that bay held a large HDD for "cold" storage,
| allowing the primary SATA slot to be filled with a fast 256GB
| SSD.
| [deleted]
| majormajor wrote:
| Yeah, this used to be pretty common.
|
| Through the 90s laptops came with expansion cards and often
| swappable bays. Even late-90s Mac laptops had two bays that
| you could swap batteries, DVD/CD/floppy drives into and out
| of, plus a PC Card slot that could take things like TV video
| capture cards or Wifi adapters.
|
| I don't remember if PCMCIA slots had enough bandwidth to make
| external video cards practical (plus... it would require a
| separate monitor, I guess), though.
|
| They all went away in the quest for lightweight size and
| capacity... especially as more things got built in.
| znpy wrote:
| > I don't remember if PCMCIA slots had enough bandwidth to
| make external video cards practical (plus... it would
| require a separate monitor, I guess), though.
|
| PCMCIA surely not, but express card most likely.
|
| I remember some mods installing an external GPU onto the
| mythical ThinkPad X220 by means of a bridge card that would
| fit in the express card slot and would allow a full pci-
| express to be connected. See:
| https://artemis.sh/2021/08/04/eGPU-on-thinkpad-x220.html
| acomjean wrote:
| PCMCIA
|
| I remember those slightly larger than a credit card (and
| thicker).
|
| I had 2, and IBM one which had a eithernet and modem on it
| (and a really fun sparkly label). and a scsi one for a zip
| drive (they had parallel port zip drives... but)
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| I had one I got at the Spy Museum in DC that was a little
| compartment! In high school I used to keep a $20 bill in
| there in case I wanted to do something with my friends
| that cost money
| toast0 wrote:
| > I don't remember if PCMCIA slots had enough bandwidth to
| make external video cards practical (plus... it would
| require a separate monitor, I guess), though.
|
| Original PCMCIA was 16-bit ISA (not sure the speed),
| CardBus was 32-bit, 33Mhz PCI with DMA and whatnot.
| Certainly there were many video cards on 16-bit ISA, but I
| wouldn't think you'd want to stuff one into a PCMCIA slot,
| maybe a hercules card so you could do monochrome/color
| multi-monitor; but multimonitor didn't really come into
| popularity until windows 98 and 2000 on the NT side;
| advanced graphics card back then were AGP, but some were
| released as 32-bit PCI as well; they almost certainly
| wouldn't have been able to be compacted to fit in the slot,
| but you could probably have a cardbus -> pci slot adapter
| and some ugly thing. A quick search doesn't find any, but
| I'd expect something to exist as a development tool.
| sschueller wrote:
| I find that hilarious because we did that back in the day on
| laptops that let you put batteries in instead of a cd or floppy
| drive.
|
| Then Apple happened and ever laptop maker only saw the cash,
| abondend what users needed and wanted to copy what Apple was
| peddling including making parts on replacable.
|
| Now after waisting all these resources on form over function
| even Apple has started to go back to function (at least a tiny
| bit).
| sneak wrote:
| > _Then Apple happened and ever laptop maker only saw the
| cash, abondend what users needed_
|
| 99% of users don't need a powerful discrete GPU _or_ an
| extended battery, as evidenced by the Macbook Air (the base,
| sub-$1k model) being Apple 's bestselling computer by far.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| In fairness as well, Apple's laptop battery life is top
| notch. So paradoxically it could be said that proves people
| do need more battery
| nordsieck wrote:
| > 99% of users don't need a powerful discrete GPU or an
| extended battery, as evidenced by the Macbook Air (the
| base, sub-$1k model) being Apple's bestselling computer by
| far.
|
| To be fair to Apple, the m1 air has an absurdly good
| battery life.
| kaliqt wrote:
| Let's be honest... That's a new thing. Laptops have sucked
| for a long time prior.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Then Apple happened_
|
| As much as I dislike Apple's anti-repair and anti-upgrade
| practices, they're hardly to blame for this. They only gave
| consumers what they wanted, and consumer collectively voted
| for their wallets for sexyer, slimmer and lighter notebooks
| at the expense of repairability and upgradability, regardless
| of who made them, Apple, Lenovo, Dell, Asus etc.
|
| Consumers are a lot more likely to prioritize _" hey look, my
| laptop fits inside a Manila Envelope"_ rather than "hey look,
| I can unscrew and replace/repair all these components in my
| laptop if something breaks".
|
| Now the entire consumer electronics industry has conditioned
| consumers that whenever their laptop breaks they just take it
| to a "genius" bar where some dude who doesn't have any
| electronics repair knowledge (because that would be too
| expensive), takes a look at your laptop and says "sorry mate,
| looks like it's fucked and you're gonna need a new
| motherboard replacement for 800$", when in fact it can be
| fixed for 50$ in a 10 minute soldering job by a technician
| who actually knows electronics but is either retired or out
| of work because his job was offshored to China and we don't
| repair things anymore we just throw them in the landfill
| "because we're that wealthy and stuff made in China is that
| cheap".
|
| Hopefully right to repair laws, stricter environmental rules
| and trade tariffs, will put an end to this consumerist
| throwaway madness that just jack up corporate profits at the
| expense of everything else, even if that means that MacBook
| Airs will have to be 1.5mm thinker.
| varispeed wrote:
| Interesting that nobody came with a concept of a desktop PC,
| but as a laptop (commercially) before.
|
| Most like due to perceived niche, no standard format of laptop
| motherboards, not easy to buy laptop motherboard off the shelf.
|
| Then also the technology was evolving, so manufacturers maybe
| didn't want to restrict themselves to the certain layout and
| way how components can be laid out and connected.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I would love to see an external monitor with embedded
| GPU/extra CPU etc that would serve as an extension to a
| laptop, tablet, phone or stick. If such devices were popular
| enough in remote-first offices, coworkings and hotels, it
| would be a game changer making computing more inclusive.
| Imagine having a $100 laptop with easily replaceable
| components that is transformed into $1500 workstation on
| demand.
| vel0city wrote:
| External Thunderbolt GPU enclosures exist and can behave as
| a dock. A friend has one at his place, I can just plop my
| own cheap laptop in and it gets a massively upgraded GPU,
| access to a few monitors, USB PD, a USB hub with all the
| peripherals plugged in, and wired networking.
|
| Its not all built into the monitor, but IMO having the
| several hundred dollar GPU outside of the monitor gives
| really good flexibility. The dock isn't much larger than
| the GPU and a few hundred watt power supply which you'd
| need anyways.
|
| The only thing really missing from that equation is the
| extra CPU power and it being integrated into the monitor.
| But having a powerful CPU that scales down to be power
| friendly when on the go seems easier than finding a
| powerful GPU that doesn't suck the battery dry just
| rendering a desktop and a browser window.
| acomjean wrote:
| Isn't that what "Display Link" usb monitors kinda are
| (without the powerful gpu and large screen real estate)
|
| I've used a usb-> monitor adapter from time to time (with
| my own screen). The performance wasn't great, but its not
| bad and been more than usable for work and such.
|
| with usb3 it should be better than the one I used.
|
| https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-
| graphics/disp...
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Well, the connector does not really matter, the key is
| the hardware at the extension.
| CPU+GPU+screen+network+camera+HDD with some software that
| you need only in workstation mode etc. The software could
| be sandboxed by the OS on your device, security of extra
| CPU and GPU is interesting, but probably solvable
| problem.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| That's pretty much an all-in-one PC. E.g. an iMac, or a
| Surface Studio.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| yes, if all components are present, it looks like an all-
| in-one PC. But again, I'm talking about an extension,
| where OS and your data belong to your portable device and
| run in trusted environment using extension resources when
| necessary.
| dijit wrote:
| I had the same idea before, its basically possible now if
| you pass through the SSD to a host computer.
|
| I even thought about maybe having an external SSD module
| which you could swap out the SSD to a beast machine when
| you need it.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| This solution will work even with good old HDD, but you
| need a whole host computer and you swap, not extend your
| hardware.
| sh34r wrote:
| I strongly believe the tech just wasn't there 10 years ago.
| It shouldn't have taken as long as it did to make a modular
| laptop, but making some ten billion smartphones (and the
| constant drive to make them ever thinner and smaller) made it
| so we can pack far more power into a smaller space.
|
| Modularity and repairability is always going to lead to less
| space efficient designs. I will gladly concur that Apple and
| others have taken severe advantage of this in an excuse to
| push planned obsolescence, long after anyone cared about
| shaving another millimeter from a device. But there was
| absolutely a time where it just wasn't feasible to make a
| laptop do what people wanted, at the desired price point, and
| also make it modular. Computer architecture's all about
| tradeoffs and there just wasn't a viable product on that part
| of the "efficient frontier." Similar argument explains why
| gaming laptops were also a massive disappointment for so many
| years. There are conflicting requirements.
|
| People also didn't really care as much about right to repair,
| when hardware improvements made you want to upgrade every few
| years anyway, and we didn't have such rapacious anti-consumer
| monopolies.
| jjice wrote:
| There was a short period where external GPUs that could
| connect to your laptop were kind of big a few years back. The
| never really took off though, and that was the only big
| component I saw that with.
| theWreckluse wrote:
| Any idea why they didn't take off?
| [deleted]
| mschild wrote:
| Guess on my part, but likely cost.
|
| The cheapest egpu case I could find is 300 Euros and
| that's just the case with an internal PSU. You still need
| to buy an incredibly expensive GPU to put into it.
|
| So now you're spending probably 1k just for the laptop,
| plus 300 for the case and an additional, let say, 350-400
| on the GPU. For that amount of money, most would probably
| look for good laptops that have an integrated one, buy a
| handheld, a console, or just don't want to spend that
| amount of money on it.
| Jochim wrote:
| They often just don't justify the cost. The enclosures
| themselves are expensive, and there's a really rough
| performance hit, less than half the framerate of the same
| card connected via PCIe in some cases[0]. A decent gaming
| laptop probably costs about the same while having better
| performance[1].
|
| They're not particularly portable either, so you'd be
| better off getting the gaming laptop, or building a
| desktop with a cheaper GPU for roughly the same price.
|
| The size/power delivery of the enclosure can be a
| limiting factor as well, new GPUs have tended to be
| bigger and more power hungry, resulting in many
| enclosures just not being compatible with newer cards.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlYHPj-0DTE
|
| [1] https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/pcie-slot-dgpu-vs-
| thunderbo...`
| usrusr wrote:
| Standing on the shoulders of giants is a pointless endeavor
| if the giants simply aren't there or if their abilities are
| too narrowly focused on the very hard problems.
|
| Very fast (on a contemporary scale) mobile extension
| interfaces have come and gone before, but only PCIe in its
| USB-C and m.2 incarnations not only excels at high
| performance but also scales down nicely to things as
| pedestrian as plugging in a mouse or a non-exotic storage
| extension. PCMCIA for example was dead weight unless you
| happened to be one of the very few who had one of those super
| exotic cards. An unused lightning 4 slot? There can never be
| enough of those, the more the merrier. You might find
| yourself using it for things as simple as topping up your
| bike light battery when it's not running an external GPU.
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