5 ms·

Framework Laptop 16 Deep Dive – 180W Power Adapter

53 points by MMS21 3y ago

sneak 3y ago
That's not a deep dive. It doesn't even show the PCB.
- yonatan8070 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm all for the idea behind framework but there's very little actual technical details being shared other than controller ICs
  - stingraycharles 3y ago
    LTT had a video recently where he went to their production facilities and show how they’re actually making the laptops. Was pretty informative, more informative than the information we’re getting from framework themselves.
- wootest 3y ago
  It's not a "deep dive" of the power adapter - it's part of a "deep dive" series of the laptop model, writing an article each about individual components.
- COGlory 3y ago
  Yeah, I wouldn't call any of these "Deep dives". Perhaps they're catered to the audience that might be reading their blog, but I doubt that audience differs much from the HN audience.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mcpackieh 3y ago
Virtually all of the electrical energy put into a computer is turned into heat, right? Some of it comes out as visible light from the screen and some tiny portion of it is.. converted into information I guess? But generally a 180W computer is putting out very nearly 180W of thermal energy, as I understand it. My point is that laptops with 90W adapters can get too hot to comfortably touch, I think at 180W you're well past the point where actually using it on your lap is advisable.
- josephcsible 3y ago
  > My point is that laptops with 90W adapters can get too hot to comfortably touch, I think at 180W you're well past the point where actually using it on your lap is advisable. You're mixing up thermal energy and temperature. Consider that you can easily burn yourself on a 60W soldering iron, but it'd be quite hard to do so on a 1500W oil-filled space heater.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    You could keep temperature down with fans, but my 90W thinkpad has fans so strong it sounds (and feels) like a hair drier and still runs very hot. I'm having a hard time imagining a 180W laptop that isn't hotter than hell.
    - steelbrain 3y ago
      You’re missing another variable here. In your case it may just be the thermal interface material (TIM) isn’t doing a good job of transferring the heat from the processor onto the heat sinks that the fan blows over. I’ve had temperature drops of over 15 degrees c by opting for Liquid Metal, everything else being same.
      - 111111IIIIIII 3y ago
        Additionally, loudness is not necessarily correlated with actually moving air. It can often correlate with obstruction to moving air.
    - vorpalhex 3y ago
      You have a gap in your understanding of the physics here. Even a 400W laptop can be cool to the touch. A laptop is hot to the touch because it has hot components (eg a processor running at full throttle) and fails to dissipate that heat correctly. That is mostly divorced from it's power consumption. If you ran a large robotic arm off your laptop, you'd be using a lot of watts but making only a bit of heat.
chrismorgan 3y ago
> Beyond reducing environmental impact through efficiency and recycled materials, we’ve enabled longevity by making both the 2m USB-C and 1m AC cables removable, letting you swap a cable if your cat chews through it. It baffled me when I first actually examined a laptop that used USB-C natively to discover that its power adapter didn’t use a removable USB-C cable. I’d just assumed implicitly that they would, because obviously you would do it that way since the cables are so frail and always fail long before the brick, and lots of people would like to be able to use a different-length cable. So far I haven’t had an A–C or C–C cable last for even six months, with not particularly stressful usage. Nor have I had an A–Micro-B cable last much beyond a year in the longest case (normally much less). In all cases, they become unreliable. I’ve tried quite a few different brands by this point, mostly on the cheaper side of things but not all, and have observed no significant difference between cheap and expensive. They all fail. Does anyone make cables that don’t fall apart ridiculously quickly, failing at the cable/plug junction or within the Micro-B plug? DC barrel jacks, they fail eventually too, but they’ve at least tended to last two to four years, which is slightly less absurd. My current ASUS laptop’s barrel jack became unreliable after a year and a half in a way novel to me: the metal of the jack has been etched by the latching mechanism in the laptop, to the point that it no longer works if sitting forwards or backwards, only up or down (the less common, and thus less etched, orientations for me), or if you unseat its latching by pull it out a fraction of a millimetre.
- jolux 3y ago
  > Does anyone make cables that don’t fall apart ridiculously quickly, failing at the cable/plug junction? I always hear that Apple cables are prone to falling apart but I’ve had USB-C chargers for my laptop since 2017, carried them around everywhere, didn’t baby them, and they’re mostly fine. They’re kinda yellow and brown now instead of white but that’s the worst of it. Genuinely not sure if I’m doing something different or if I’ve been lucky or what.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    At least some USB-C cables aren't very good. The USB-C charging cable I got with my Dell laptop failed due to inadequate strain relief (rubber sheath failed right where it met the plug.)
humanistbot 3y ago
Two week old dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246309
hu3 3y ago
My current client-issued contracting laptop has a 230W power adapter. Runs cool and silent'ish during Laravel/TypeScript webdev. JetBrains IDE barely manages to spin the fans a bit noticeable before it goes back to smooth sailing. So a 180W adapter no longer causes me to react much. But I bet it would run pretty hot and loud if I toyed around with stable diffusion and a bunch more containers. And then there are aboslute units like the Razor Blade 18 with 330W power adapter: https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-18 https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-18 (13th gen i9 with RTX 4090)
- serpix 3y ago
  An M2 Pro draws around 20W with IntelliJ development, usually it hovers at around 12W. Gaming with GeForce Now keeps it at 12W as well. I am baffled by the need for over ten fold power adapters.
  - hu3 3y ago
    I don't think 13gen intel laptops draw much more than 40w for mundane development like ours. But I'd have to measure. My laptop sports a RTX 3080. That's probably the main driver for such max power needs. Obviously Geforce Now doesn't incur in more power draw as it delegates running games to the cloud.
josh2600 3y ago
So is apple just gonna buy this company or what?
- Sunspark 3y ago
  Doubtful, the philosophy of the company goes against Apple's way of doing things. Apple likes sealed products that obsolesce in place. Framework likes the computer of Theseus approach. Apple will have to start re-considering their approach though.. the EU has now mandated that phones need to start introducing replaceable batteries, etc. There has been far too much e-waste. Why should one have to purchase an entirely new phone just because the battery wore out?
- amendegree 3y ago
  why would apple buy them?
rfwhyte 3y ago
How about a "Deep dive" into pricing already. My sinking suspicion is they're intentionally holding back pricing as long as possible, as revealing how expensive this thing is going to be would cause the wheels to fall off the hype-train somewhat.

53 points by MMS21 3y ago

sneak 3y ago

That's not a deep dive. It doesn't even show the PCB.

yonatan8070 3y ago
Yeah, I'm all for the idea behind framework but there's very little actual technical details being shared other than controller ICs
- stingraycharles 3y ago
  LTT had a video recently where he went to their production facilities and show how they’re actually making the laptops. Was pretty informative, more informative than the information we’re getting from framework themselves.
wootest 3y ago
It's not a "deep dive" of the power adapter - it's part of a "deep dive" series of the laptop model, writing an article each about individual components.
COGlory 3y ago
Yeah, I wouldn't call any of these "Deep dives". Perhaps they're catered to the audience that might be reading their blog, but I doubt that audience differs much from the HN audience.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mcpackieh 3y ago

Virtually all of the electrical energy put into a computer is turned into heat, right? Some of it comes out as visible light from the screen and some tiny portion of it is.. converted into information I guess? But generally a 180W computer is putting out very nearly 180W of thermal energy, as I understand it. My point is that laptops with 90W adapters can get too hot to comfortably touch, I think at 180W you're well past the point where actually using it on your lap is advisable.

josephcsible 3y ago
> My point is that laptops with 90W adapters can get too hot to comfortably touch, I think at 180W you're well past the point where actually using it on your lap is advisable. You're mixing up thermal energy and temperature. Consider that you can easily burn yourself on a 60W soldering iron, but it'd be quite hard to do so on a 1500W oil-filled space heater.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  You could keep temperature down with fans, but my 90W thinkpad has fans so strong it sounds (and feels) like a hair drier and still runs very hot. I'm having a hard time imagining a 180W laptop that isn't hotter than hell.
  - steelbrain 3y ago
    You’re missing another variable here. In your case it may just be the thermal interface material (TIM) isn’t doing a good job of transferring the heat from the processor onto the heat sinks that the fan blows over. I’ve had temperature drops of over 15 degrees c by opting for Liquid Metal, everything else being same.
    - 111111IIIIIII 3y ago
      Additionally, loudness is not necessarily correlated with actually moving air. It can often correlate with obstruction to moving air.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    You have a gap in your understanding of the physics here. Even a 400W laptop can be cool to the touch. A laptop is hot to the touch because it has hot components (eg a processor running at full throttle) and fails to dissipate that heat correctly. That is mostly divorced from it's power consumption. If you ran a large robotic arm off your laptop, you'd be using a lot of watts but making only a bit of heat.

chrismorgan 3y ago

> Beyond reducing environmental impact through efficiency and recycled materials, we’ve enabled longevity by making both the 2m USB-C and 1m AC cables removable, letting you swap a cable if your cat chews through it. It baffled me when I first actually examined a laptop that used USB-C natively to discover that its power adapter didn’t use a removable USB-C cable. I’d just assumed implicitly that they would, because obviously you would do it that way since the cables are so frail and always fail long before the brick, and lots of people would like to be able to use a different-length cable. So far I haven’t had an A–C or C–C cable last for even six months, with not particularly stressful usage. Nor have I had an A–Micro-B cable last much beyond a year in the longest case (normally much less). In all cases, they become unreliable. I’ve tried quite a few different brands by this point, mostly on the cheaper side of things but not all, and have observed no significant difference between cheap and expensive. They all fail. Does anyone make cables that don’t fall apart ridiculously quickly, failing at the cable/plug junction or within the Micro-B plug? DC barrel jacks, they fail eventually too, but they’ve at least tended to last two to four years, which is slightly less absurd. My current ASUS laptop’s barrel jack became unreliable after a year and a half in a way novel to me: the metal of the jack has been etched by the latching mechanism in the laptop, to the point that it no longer works if sitting forwards or backwards, only up or down (the less common, and thus less etched, orientations for me), or if you unseat its latching by pull it out a fraction of a millimetre.

jolux 3y ago
> Does anyone make cables that don’t fall apart ridiculously quickly, failing at the cable/plug junction? I always hear that Apple cables are prone to falling apart but I’ve had USB-C chargers for my laptop since 2017, carried them around everywhere, didn’t baby them, and they’re mostly fine. They’re kinda yellow and brown now instead of white but that’s the worst of it. Genuinely not sure if I’m doing something different or if I’ve been lucky or what.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  At least some USB-C cables aren't very good. The USB-C charging cable I got with my Dell laptop failed due to inadequate strain relief (rubber sheath failed right where it met the plug.)

humanistbot 3y ago

Two week old dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246309 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246309

hu3 3y ago

My current client-issued contracting laptop has a 230W power adapter. Runs cool and silent'ish during Laravel/TypeScript webdev. JetBrains IDE barely manages to spin the fans a bit noticeable before it goes back to smooth sailing. So a 180W adapter no longer causes me to react much. But I bet it would run pretty hot and loud if I toyed around with stable diffusion and a bunch more containers. And then there are aboslute units like the Razor Blade 18 with 330W power adapter: https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-18 https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-18 (13th gen i9 with RTX 4090)

serpix 3y ago
An M2 Pro draws around 20W with IntelliJ development, usually it hovers at around 12W. Gaming with GeForce Now keeps it at 12W as well. I am baffled by the need for over ten fold power adapters.
- hu3 3y ago
  I don't think 13gen intel laptops draw much more than 40w for mundane development like ours. But I'd have to measure. My laptop sports a RTX 3080. That's probably the main driver for such max power needs. Obviously Geforce Now doesn't incur in more power draw as it delegates running games to the cloud.

josh2600 3y ago

So is apple just gonna buy this company or what?

Sunspark 3y ago
Doubtful, the philosophy of the company goes against Apple's way of doing things. Apple likes sealed products that obsolesce in place. Framework likes the computer of Theseus approach. Apple will have to start re-considering their approach though.. the EU has now mandated that phones need to start introducing replaceable batteries, etc. There has been far too much e-waste. Why should one have to purchase an entirely new phone just because the battery wore out?
amendegree 3y ago
why would apple buy them?

rfwhyte 3y ago

How about a "Deep dive" into pricing already. My sinking suspicion is they're intentionally holding back pricing as long as possible, as revealing how expensive this thing is going to be would cause the wheels to fall off the hype-train somewhat.