Hi there, I’ve been wanting a framework for awhile now, just haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I was perusing the website today, comparing the price and performance of different configurations, when I realized that the 16 needs a 100w power adapter, 180w if you’ve got the graphics card.
This is a dumb question, because obviously it would charge fine with the lid closed and idling or turned off. Or I could just upgrade my power adapters. But I have a lot of 65w USB C PD chargers in my house and cars, and I was wondering if anyone has tried using them, and if so how effective is it?
Like, 180w is a lot of power. If I’m just working on spreadsheets or something, I’m imagining it would charge just fine? Under a heavier load I would probably start to slip backwards? Where’s the line? Movie watching? Light gaming?
Just food for discussion I guess, I still haven’t pulled the trigger haha.
Thanks!
Yes, you can charge the laptop with a 65W charger. If you have the GPU, it won’t charge when you are playing games or doing intensive tasks, but it will charge the laptop the rest of the time
Thanks!
I can’t specifically speak to the Framework, but generally with laptops and USB-C charging you can still use them with lower wattage chargers. If you’re not using the machine at all it should still charge, just slower than it’s capable of. If you’re using the machine but not intensively it might still charge, but slowly. If you’re using more power than the charger will supply they’ll usually supplement from the battery. Depending on the workload it can be a momentary surge or continuous. If you’re continuously drawing power from the battery and charger you’ll run the computer longer than you would on battery alone but you’ll still eventually need to switch to an adequate charger or stop using the computer while it charges.
That’s fair. I figured as much. I’m still doing most of my couch computing on a 2016 Chromebook. It calls for a 45w charger, but I’ve used my 18w phone charger in the past. It complains about it, but it still slooowly charges.
I was hoping the framework would fare better on 65w.
Again, not a big deal, just a talking point. Easily solved problem. Just curious. Thanks!
I would be shocked if 65w doesn’t work at all. How much you can do with it will be variable. It should be adequate for charging at the very least.
A 65w or so PD supply works fine for driving dual 4k monitors and general programming etc. You only need the 180watt+ for using the external gpu
My travel PSU is a 65W Anker GaN and it works perfectly on my FW16. Granted, I rarely push above 20W except when running a VBox.
Ok that’s great to hear. Basically it functions perfectly fine so long as you aren’t stressing the system.
I’m not even sure the FW16 without dGPU can get over 65W. Worst case scenario, you’re still losing battery during very intensive work.
I assume if the PD charger can support the voltage required it’ll charge no matter what? If you read the back of the charger it should say what voltages/max current they support and it should the voltage and max current on the framework as well
I think the 180w requirement isn’t really a requirement but just enough power that it can charge while drawing the maximum amount of power
That makes sense. I’m pretty sure all my chargers support voltages up in the 20s, I forget what the standard is. So perhaps that’s the main factor.
Thanks for your input!
On Linux at least low enough power chargers will get rejected and won’t do anything. Idk what the cutoff is but USB a phone chargers won’t work.
Hmmm, well USB PD is pretty universal and I imagine that’s what framework uses?
18w is pretty low, I agree and I wouldn’t expect that to work. But the 13 inch framework uses a 65w power supply so it certainly seems in the realm of possibility. To me anyway.
I’d love to know if anyone has tried it
I can’t talk about the Framework specifically, but my laptop will also reject lower power chargers (65W) when the battery is low, or the power draw is too high (i.e. when the laptop wants to draw more power than can be supplied).
Interesting, so perhaps it could be an issue. I’d be curious to find out!
65 watts will be fine without the dGPU module. If anything, the CPU will be limited to a slightly lower wattage (see here). EDIT: this seems to be a bug.
Nice research! Thanks!
