[HN Gopher] Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive - Enclosure
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Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive - Enclosure
Author : crthpl
Score : 197 points
Date : 2023-06-22 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (frame.work)
(TXT) w3m dump (frame.work)
| RGamma wrote:
| Give it a trackpoint and it's mine!
| Humbly8967 wrote:
| System76 might be willing to collaborate on this. They are
| designing a trackpoint into their upcoming in-house laptop, and
| they make open hardware.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| See also
|
| https://starlabs.systems/pages/starfighter
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I don't get it. What does this has to do with the article?
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| its am alternative linux laptop. probably brought up because
| this crowd mostly looks at framework to put linux on.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Absolutely nothing.
|
| Theres been a lot of people trying to bring up Starlabs in
| threads about Framework and System76 both.
|
| Fun fact: Starlabs and System76 buy from the same ODM.
| System76 has their model customized and does additional QA
| and is moving to Coreboot across all their product lines,
| Starlabs _does none of these_.
|
| tl;dr: Framework > System76 > {any major OEM/ODM, Starlabs} >
| Apple, for the purposes of any given Linux laptop discussion.
| Stop shilling for Starlabs.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| What other companies are selling anything like the
| Starfighter?
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| You stop shilling for System76, no matter how good their QA
| is, the actual product is trash. Their screens and casing
| are on the level of bargain store acer machines, not
| premium quality laptops. I want my Linux hardware to be on
| the level of Macs, "privacy" and "coreboot" are no excuse
| for lack of product vision and poor mechanical engineering.
| shinyogre wrote:
| Still no trackpoint.
| kibwen wrote:
| Surprised to learn that magnesium is lighter than aluminum. Is it
| also more expensive? There must be some reason people still
| mostly use aluminum.
| G3rn0ti wrote:
| Magnesium is lighter than Aluminum because it is in the 2nd
| group of the periodic system to the left of Aluminum residing
| in the 3rd. The latter has got one additional proton and a
| couple of neutrons more.
| artimaeis wrote:
| There's more to it than their atomic weights. Magnesium (24
| amu) is ~66% the density of aluminum (27 amu). As I
| understand it, the crystalline structure of aluminum is more
| "tightly packed" than that of magnesium.
| larperdoodle wrote:
| Quick search says its about $1 more per kilo
| nick0garvey wrote:
| Aluminum alloys are also generally stronger than magnesium
| alloys.
| coastermug wrote:
| Magnesium is harder to machine. The chips produced can be
| highly flammable.
| accrual wrote:
| I thought this line was interesting:
|
| > with no externally visible fasteners
|
| I wonder if it was easier or thinner to do that way, or if it was
| a deliberate design choice for a more minimal appearance.
|
| Personally I don't mind seeing fasteners. After swapping LCDs on
| my old Thinkpads a couple times, I stopped replacing the screw
| covers and embraced one fewer step for future maintenance.
| nrp wrote:
| Amazingly enough, we didn't go in with this as a design goal
| from the start. The Framework Laptop 13 has exposed fasteners
| on the Bottom Cover, and we went in assuming we'd go the same
| direction. As we designed the Input Module system, it became
| clear that the best way to design it was installing everything
| directly down into the Bottom Cover, meaning you don't need to
| flip the system over to unscrew anything. The result is a
| Bottom Cover that is super clean.
| Triangle9349 wrote:
| Sorry for the stupid question, what is the advantage of your
| new connection for gpu? why not oculink or pcie riser or
| thunderbolt?
| nrp wrote:
| PCIe is too physically large, Oculink is too thick and
| doesn't have enough pins for power, and Thunderbolt has
| protocol overhead and throughput limitations.
| fragmede wrote:
| Yeah, sorry, no. Thunderbolt does have overhead and
| limitations, but imo those limitations don't justify
| making a new standard, even if it's more open than the
| others. Maybe you could say more about those limitations
| and convince me?
| Triangle9349 wrote:
| It seems to me that oculink port is still a good option
| for side module, although it's unrealistic. I hope ltt
| lab create custom gpu module from the desktop 4090:
| built-in power, water cooling and of course rgb :)
| hypeatei wrote:
| "Deep dive" too soon...
| adad95 wrote:
| they just need to make a touchscreen display to have me all in
| award_ wrote:
| I went searching and was sad to find it'll ship without touch
| support. The display sure sounds great, but lacking touch is
| kind of a deal breaker for me.
| yumraj wrote:
| Any ETA for 16" ?
| stavros wrote:
| I really love my Framework. I love that I can hack it (I made a
| Yubikey adapter so I could always have it inserted:
| https://www.stavros.io/posts/making-a-security-key-for-the-f...),
| I love that I can trivially repair any component that breaks, and
| it feels great as well, it's very light and solid.
|
| The only issues I have with it is battery life (though I have the
| battery set to charge to 70% max, which leaves a lot on the
| table), and the fact that Intel processors heat up very easily.
|
| I really hope Intel and AMD get their shit together and release a
| processor as efficient as Apple silicon, I don't want to end up
| using my MacBook more than my Framework.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Is that really the best phrasing for the title, today? Like,
| particularly today?
| cowpig wrote:
| I find the battery life on my framework 13 really bad (ubuntu
| installed).
|
| There's some issue where the battery drains fairly quickly in
| suspend which requires enabling "deep sleep" mode, but it still
| drains a lot faster than other laptops I've had.
|
| And then the battery life in general isn't very good; I'd say ~2
| hours at full brightness with some video streaming mixed in with
| normal browsing.
|
| I wonder if that's the same experience other people have? And
| whether the 16 will have better battery life?
| Twisted5939 wrote:
| They also changed the HDMI and DP cards to draw less power:
| https://frame.work/blog/testing-the-battery-life-of-framewor...
| seabrookmx wrote:
| I'm running Fedora with the i5-1240p, but I can squeak out
| maybe 4.5hours max if I'm just in VS Code and don't have my
| brightness maxed out. With max brightness and Google meet
| running in Firefox, I barely get 2. And that's with the "Power
| Saver" profile enabled in GNOME.
|
| I really love the machine otherwise, but I can't say I haven't
| considered just getting a Macbook Air (especially now that they
| have the 15").
| CarVac wrote:
| On my 1240p I've gone 6 hours on 80% of the battery (the
| limit I set) coding in vim at a reasonable indoor brightness.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| Spending a ton of time on brittle power configuration in order
| to get from "bad" to "meh", and suspend never quite working
| properly, is part of the experience of owning a linux laptop.
| That's the way it's always been.
|
| Solutions include not caring, buying a mac, or buying windows
| and using WSL.
| buildbot wrote:
| With windows you have the danger of not suspending or doing
| what my surfacebook does and just self heating -the gpu
| sometimes doesn't get the sleep command, and just sits there
| burning power while the fan is shut down..easily hits 100C.
| newsclues wrote:
| Linux battery life is what sells so many MacBooks to
| developers.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| > I'd say ~2 hours at full brightness
|
| Most laptops with high brightness monitors would leave you with
| about 2-3 hours of battery life... many laptops can hit 300-400
| nits, some even more.
|
| sRGB and BT709 declare the brightness of SDR white as 100 nits,
| and 100-120 is considered acceptable.
|
| The rest of what you say sounds like your Ubuntu is
| misconfigured, which is common with Ubuntu installs. The fix is
| usually either changing a few files in /etc, or installing an
| entirely different distro that isn't user hostile.
| hellcow wrote:
| The 13th gen apparently has dramatically better battery life,
| which is great since the battery life otherwise prevented me
| from buying one. They spent a lot of time optimizing it both in
| hardware and software.
| lhl wrote:
| In case you haven't seen, in April, Framework published an
| official Optimizing Ubuntu Battery Life guide that is quite
| useful: https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/optimizing-
| ubuntu-bat...
|
| If that doesn't help, I'd recommend reviewing some of the
| resources:
|
| * Framework Forum Linux battery life tuning thread (300+
| messages) https://community.frame.work/t/guide-linux-battery-
| life-tuni...
|
| * anarcat's Framework Battery Life and Power management
| testing: https://anarc.at/hardware/laptop/framework-12th-
| gen/#battery...
|
| * I also did a long review covering different ways of
| optimizing CPU performance, evaluating idle and near idle power
| consumption, various power-testing (including writing a suspend
| battery logging tool that people may find useful, etc):
| https://github.com/lhl/linuxlaptops/wiki/2022-Framework-Lapt...
| cowpig wrote:
| Super helpful, thanks!
| strangescript wrote:
| I find battery life with linux in general pretty poor. It also
| struggles achieve any kind of reasonable hibernate/suspend. I
| can throw my macbook into a bag and pull out a week later with
| just a small battery draw down. I have never had a linux laptop
| that would not be completely dead in that scenario.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I find my macbook (M1, Air) achieves really good battery life
| when I'm actively using it as my main computer (so including
| sleep/hibernate) but extremely poor when I'm not. For example
| if I turn my Macbook completely off and leave it for a month,
| the batteries drained completely.
| moondev wrote:
| You are really doing a good job convincing me I need a third
| framework
| butz wrote:
| Are we at the point where buying and assembling a laptop, like
| building a desktop PC, can be done by any enthusiast?
| dheera wrote:
| If you buy all components from Frame.work, yes. Nobody else to
| my knowledge is making compatible components for their laptops
| though, so we're still a ways away from having an ecosystem of
| options like desktop PCs have.
|
| If you're not an EE, the only things you can buy 3rd party are
| RAM, SSD, and Wi-Fi modules. Which you can do the same for
| Thinkpads.
|
| That said -- I do appreciate that partial upgrades are possible
| with Frame.work. I own one and when I upgrade the motherboard,
| even though I can only buy a motherboard upgrade from them, I
| won't be upgrading the case, display, and other things that
| don't need upgrades.
| WWLink wrote:
| To date, framework's laptops are the only ones I've ever seen
| that were designed with replacing the motherboard as a
| possible upgrade path. There are a few Thinkpad series out
| there that by happy coincidence, you can swap parts and
| upgrade screens or maybe change to a newer generation's
| motherboard.. but generally that's more of a coincidence and
| not an intent.
|
| I'm glad framework is trying this out. I'm not surprised
| about the battery life, but pretty much anything not made by
| Apple will have that issue lol.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| If anything I would suspect if it's anywhere near the
| complexity of assembling a PC. This laptop is designed to be
| no-more than a real-world drag and drop machine
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| Apropos of nothing, I learned (thanks to a recent Linus Tech Tips
| video) that Framework's DIY Edition laptops are preassembled for
| QA and then disassembled prior to shipping. I found that amusing.
| Not sure I could buy a DIY model knowing that.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Why does that matter?
|
| Most people buying them will likely use their own RAM, storage
| and OS anyway.
|
| And either way, you'd ostensibly want to make sure your
| computer is supposed to work once you assemble it yourself.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow you here. I'm not saying that it should
| necessarily come with RAM, storage, and OS, which can be
| removed without disassembling the entire laptop. And I'm not
| making a statement one way or the other on whether you'll
| have to ensure your computer works.
|
| I'm only saying that it's funny to learn that Framework
| undergoes some effort to assemble and test the laptop only to
| undo that work so the buyer can assemble the entire thing. It
| might be for entirely good reasons, but that doesn't make it
| a bit funny prima facie.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > It might be for entirely good reasons, but that doesn't
| make it a bit funny prima facie.
|
| It might be funny, but your argument wasn't just that, it
| was that you wouldn't buy it because of this fact, which
| seems absurd.
|
| They're using known good hardware to make sure the parts
| they _do_ send you will work. The hardware they 're putting
| in and taking out prior to shipping will likely not even
| remotely be the parts you actually use since it's BYO.
| They're just there to make sure that what they _do_ ship
| will work once assembled.
|
| As another commenter said, would you rather they didn't
| perform QA and just let the customer figure out that their
| mainboard is actually busted after spending time assembling
| it? That would be an exceptionally bad user experience.
| chromakode wrote:
| I found that very funny as well. Built a DIY edition with my
| dad a few days later. It makes more sense if you're bringing
| your own SSD or RAM, and even so I've found there's still some
| value in the DIY assembly process as an introduction to the
| hardware.
| globalreset wrote:
| They probably insert the same and known to work: storage, ram,
| etc. see if everything works, then remove them and insert them
| into the next model. The storage and ram you receive are pre-
| packaged and were QA-ed separately. It makes perfect sense,
| really.
| nrp wrote:
| Yep, this is correct. The memory, storage, Input Cover, and
| Bezel are "turn parts" that temporarily carry along the
| manufacturing line on each DIY Edition unit so that the
| system can go through the full set of manual and automated
| testing and quality control. The modules you receive in a DIY
| Edition shipment are actually totally separate modules
| specific to your order that are also independently tested and
| packed out, and are dropped into the box when the order is
| being shipped out of the warehouse.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Would you rather them not do QA?
| wpwpwpw wrote:
| Great that in some months there will be a high-end laptop that
| you don't have to throw in the garbage bin once a ram chip fries.
| High expectations.
| CarVac wrote:
| My girlfriend has had a $3000 gaming laptop die twice. Feels
| really bad to own e-waste.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| My definition of "high end" in 2023 is a battery that last 14+
| hours of general use, doesn't sound like a 747 when I open two
| Chrome tabs side by side and won't fry my nuts when I put it on
| my lap.
| devsegal wrote:
| "Frying of the nuts" has been in the changelog quite some
| time.
| stavros wrote:
| Well, there already is. I really like my Framework 13.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I don't know if magnesium is a common choice for computer
| enclosures, but one of the few examples of magnesium that I
| immediately recall (besides Surface) is a NeXT computer that went
| up in flames: https://simson.net/ref/1993/cubefire.html
| accrual wrote:
| Lenovo, and previously IBM, manufactured magnesium alloy
| chassis and roll cages for the Thinkpad line of laptops. I
| personally have a couple.
|
| It's an interesting material, it's very stiff and light,
| usually with a dark gray color and a sort of chalkboard-like
| texture.
| bri3d wrote:
| It's very popular for laptops. The reason Magnesium is popular
| is a combination of favorable physical properties like light
| weight, but especially, the specific injection molding process
| mentioned in the article, Thixomolding.
| https://www.designnews.com/materials-assembly/thixomolding-w...
| does a decent job explaining the process and how it's unique
| from most metal injection molding.
| buildbot wrote:
| Pretty common! Many cameras use a cast magnesium frame too.
|
| It's surprisingly hard to ignite! As your link explains it took
| them a bit haha.
| nrp wrote:
| Magnesium alloy is reasonably common in notebooks and other
| consumer electronics. Sometimes it's an internal structural
| element with a different cosmetic outer part, and sometimes as
| in the Framework Laptop 16 along with some of the higher end
| ThinkPads, it's directly the outer shell. As noted in the
| linked story, it's actually really difficult to burn the kinds
| of magnesium alloy that are used for structural purposes, and
| the author had to jump through hoops to get it to work.
| loughnane wrote:
| The ms surface books were magnesium I think.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is rather common. My midrange MSI laptop is made of
| magnesium alloy for instance.
|
| It has similar properties to aluminum but it can be cast,
| making it a material of choice as a more premium alternative to
| plastic.
| rfrey wrote:
| Aluminum can certainly also be cast.
| generalizations wrote:
| The Thinkpad x230 also has a magnesium case. I know, because I
| was curious why a 4' drop onto concrete did nothing but scratch
| its paint.
| rfwhyte wrote:
| Still waiting for the other shoe to drop with a pricing
| announcement. I keep getting almost excited about the Framework
| 16", but then I'm remember it's probably going to be well over
| $2500USD for a decently specced model (without a GPU even) and my
| excitement quickly dissipates.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| There's a cost to buying machines that are sustainable and use
| well paid workers, just like there's a cost to cage free eggs.
|
| I believe Foxconn, the main assembler for Apple, still sleeps 6
| workers to an apartment.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I believe Foxconn, the main assembler for Apple, still
| sleeps 6 workers to an apartment.
|
| The thing is, if Chinese labor becomes more expensive, these
| workers will get replaced either by an automated factory
| elsewhere (maybe in America!) and unemployment.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Note that the apartment is only 100 sq.Ft at the same time
| bboygravity wrote:
| What's the alternative high quality laptop in that price-range
| though?
|
| A Dell XPS that comes with a lose trackpad, massive coil whine,
| batteries that drain when plugged in and so on?
|
| Or an LG Gram Pro (more expensive than Framework) that isn't
| sold outside of the US and maybe some Asian countries where the
| only thing you can upgrade is the SSD?
|
| Or maybe some Apple laptop?
|
| I personally feel the price of a Framework is fair, even if it
| is 2500 USD (or more). Not necessarily because Framework is
| great (I would prefer 17"), but more because the alternatives
| are worse or don't exist.
| fragmede wrote:
| A Thinkpad T16 is going to be under $1,600.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Is that really going to cost $2500 though? Sounds like a
| massive deal-breaker to me.
|
| Apple is giving me a Macbook Pro with solid hardware for an
| equivalent amount of money that I can always count on for
| everything I do, and still set it for ~40% of the value 5+
| years later.
| CarVac wrote:
| For this you don't need to sell it 5+ years down the road--
| you pop in a new mainboard with the latest processor, for
| much less than a new laptop would cost, and off you go.
| hellcow wrote:
| This case looks great. Love that we have replaceable graphics on
| this one.
|
| I'm most excited for the ortholinear keyboard attachment. That
| makes it a must-buy for me, since after switching to a Kinesis
| Advantage I just can't type on a staggered layout anymore.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Oh wow, I didn't know that I needed a Framework until I read
| this.
| buildbot wrote:
| Good detail hear about the process if making the case - really
| interesting to read.
|
| Injection molding semi-liquid magnesium seems...quite difficult
| to say the least!
|
| Tangentially, I wish there was some online resources for learning
| how best design for manufacture for things like laptops and
| cases.
|
| Contract CNC fabrication is really inexpensive these days until
| you need 10 iterations to fix your dumb mistakes.
| claytonwramsey wrote:
| The fastest way to learn how to make machinable parts is to
| machine them yourself :). DFM is often a hard-earned skill.
|
| Unfortunately maker-spaces (the only kinds of places where you
| could get cheap access to good 3+ axis CNC mills) seem to have
| gone out of fashion. CNC mills in general cost about 5 digits
| just for the machine, and usually that again for the tooling.
|
| I think the closest one can get to learning some DFM without
| working on a machine would be watching machinists on YouTube.
| Back in the day NYC CNC was great, but I think they post more
| hype content these days.
|
| I'm far from an expert on the topic, but I spent a decent
| amount of time designing for and then fabricating stuff on CNC
| machines over the last couple years. To my knowledge,
| operations are cheap while setups are expensive: if you can
| design a part around a fixed orientation in a machine, it saves
| a lot of operator time.
| edrxty wrote:
| You can get into cnc the diy route for between ~$2k and ~$8k
| depending on the amount of rigidity you want. There are
| conversation kits available for common import mills to make
| the process relatively easy but the control and wiring isn't
| for the faint of heart.
|
| I built one out of a PM-833TV and it's taken years to get
| working well, and I probably should have just bought a used
| HAAS at this point, but if you build it You Will Learn one
| way or another.
|
| Words of wisdom I wish I'd had: spend the money on decent
| over specced servos with ethercat. Don't skimp or you'll end
| up having to just redo stuff and it'll cost a lot of money.
| Do not buy stepper motors period.
| zonkerdonker wrote:
| Thixomolding is an incredible process, I'm glad it's becoming
| more utilized. It really is the best for lightweight, strong,
| and super thin parts like laptop chassis.
|
| About 10 years ago I worked for a medical device company and we
| used thixo parts for a portable ultrasound system (think chunky
| laptop form factor). In my first few weeks, I had a proto part
| that needed a rework, so I chucked the thixomolded part into
| the bandsaw to chop it up, before the shop manager chewed me
| out for almost setting the shop on fire (who let this clueless
| engineer into my shop...etc etc). Magnesium dust is stupid
| flammable and burns incredibly fast and hot.
|
| There were only a handful of vendors in the world at that time
| that had the capability to mold the size of parts we needed,
| it's a vastly different process to casting other metals, in
| part due to the hazards of the material itself. Warning to all
| overly ambitious framework owners: careful if you decide to
| chop or drill into that case!
| PDTao5Q2TMaTp7U wrote:
| I like the self repair options, but the attachments are just
| dongles in another form factor
| rcoveson wrote:
| Notable, a form factor that does not dangle.
|
| Are PCIe cards just dongles in another form factor? Is it a
| question of how much of the peripheral's surface area is
| visible from the outside? Or is it the difficulty of
| insertion/removal that separates expansion cards from dongles?
|
| For me it's the dangling that makes the dongle a dongle.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Is your point that dongles are bad and therefore these are bad?
| If so, can you explain what it is you think is bad about
| dongles, and how this different form factor doesn't fix those
| issues?
|
| If that's not your point, then what is your point? My issue
| with dongle-based connections is generally 2 fold: dongles are
| an awkward thing to have/carry around and having dongle-based
| connectors usually means you only have 1-2 connectors total.
| Neither of those issues applies in this case, so to whatever
| extent they can be considered dongles, they also aren't a
| problem in my mind.
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