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<li><a href="/"><h1>Chrisoft</h1></a></li>
<li><a href="/blog"><h2>Blog</h2></a></li>
<li><a href="#"><h3 id="title">Framework Laptop: Repasting & Two Year Report</h3></a></li>
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<li><a href="/blog/list/device-review/">device-review</a></li><li><a href="/blog/list/computer-repairing/">computer-repairing</a></li></ul>
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<span>Table of Contents</span>
<ul id="tocroot">
<li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch0">“Repasting” with PTM 7950</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch1">Semi-long term review</a></li><li><ul class="tocnode"><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch2">Disassembly reveals …</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch3">Other early adopter issues</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch4">How well did it hold up?</a></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch5">Random rants</a></li></ul></li><li><a class="toctarg" href="#tocanch6">Contemplating upgrades</a></li></ul>
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<h2 id="titleh" class="TText" style="font-wight:normal;">Framework Laptop: Repasting & Two Year Report</h2>
<div id="datetags" class="TText" style="margin-bottom:1em;">2023-11-13<br>#device-review #computer-repairing</div>
<hr><div id="article" class="TText"><article>
<h2 id="tocanch0" class="tvis">“Repasting” with PTM 7950</h2>
<p>I’ve been reading testimonials from people replacing thermal paste in
their laptops with
<a href="https://thermalmanagement.honeywell.com/content/dam/thermalmanagement/en/documents/document-lists/technical/pmt-am-tims-ltm6300-pcm45f-ptm5000-series-data-sheet.pdf">PTM
7950</a>, mostly praising the amazing effectiveness of the material,
with some reporting a drastic 20 degrees C reduction. I was skeptical of
such claims. Such temperature reduction just seemed impossible to me,
especially considering the conductivity of PTM 7950 is pretty much the
same as most non-terrible thermal pastes on paper.</p>
<p>Anyway I decided to give it a try myself when I saw this mystic
material on sale for barely above $10 the other day.</p>
<p>The repasting process went pretty smoothly. However I did notice that
the screw marked “3” on the heatsink seemed a lot looser than the other
two. Maybe that has something to do with the horrible thermal I had
before…</p>
<p>Time for the results. Spoiler alert: it’s impressive. I cannot do a
scientific before and after comparison, but I did ran a few of my
day-to-day tasks as tests. Idle temperatures are already much better:
50°C before vs 38°C after. Under a short code compilation load (around 5
minutes), the initial temperatures are similar (~100°C before vs 96°C
after), but the CPU was able to boost much closer to its designated PL2
power (58W vs 45W, advertised PL2 being 60W). After the processor
stabilizes at its PL1 power it goes down to below 80°C, while the under
the old paste it was a constant 90+°C. The task also finishes ~10%
faster than before.</p>
<p>While my results aren’t as insane as some others got, it was still
huge. The biggest improvement is that merely browsing the Internet
without setting CPU power policy to powersave is now bearable – I’ve
mentioned in my previous post that the fan noise of the Framework laptop
is a pretty big issue for me personally, as the noise it emits when the
processor is above 55°C is extremely distracting in a quiet room. I also
got ~10% more performance out of this CPU, which probably makes this the
best $10 I spent on tech-related products for the past few years.</p>
<p>So would I recommend the PTM 7950? Yes, but only when you
<em>have</em> to do a repaste. As I mention before, I was skeptical of
claims about the magical power of PTM 7950. To be clear I wasn’t
doubting the thermal conductivity of the material, but rather the cause
of the temperature reduction people have been reporting – maybe their
old paste had completely dried out, or the factory paste application is
utter garbage. For my specific case – I have my reasons to suspect the
same due to the aforementioned loose screw on the heatsink I had. While
I have never touched the heatsink assembly myself since day one until
today, and the thermal profile of the machine was fairly consistent for
the past 2 years, I couldn’t rule out everything. So I don’t really know
if it is a factory defect or something else. Also I’ve seen reports that
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/LenovoLegion/comments/tfxomi/">certain
newer laptops already use similar phase change material as its <span title="Thermal Interface Material" style="text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-style:dotted;">TIM</span></a>.
So if you’re considering to repaste your brand new laptop (which isn’t
always a great idea in the first place) with PTM 7950, do remember to
check if that’s the case.</p>
<table>
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<div style="text-align:center;max-width:98%;">
<a href="//filestorage.chrisoft.org/blog/img/fw-factorypaste.jpg"><img style="width: 33%;" src="//filestorage.chrisoft.org/blog/img/ssbsthumb_1024x1024_fw-factorypaste.jpg"></a> <br>Factory
thermal paste application
</div>
</td>
<td>
<div style="text-align:center;max-width:98%;">
<a href="//filestorage.chrisoft.org/blog/img/fw-unp.jpg"><img style="width: 33%;" src="//filestorage.chrisoft.org/blog/img/ssbsthumb_1024x1024_fw-unp.jpg"></a> <br>Factory paste
removed
</div>
</td>
<td>
<div style="text-align:center;max-width:98%;">
<a href="//filestorage.chrisoft.org/blog/img/fw-ptm7.jpg"><img style="width: 33%;" src="//filestorage.chrisoft.org/blog/img/ssbsthumb_1024x1024_fw-ptm7.jpg"></a> <br>PTM 7950 applied
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h2 id="tocanch1" class="tvis">Semi-long term review</h2>
<h3 id="tocanch2" class="tvis">Disassembly reveals …</h3>
<div style="text-align:center;max-width:90%;">
<a href="//filestorage.chrisoft.org/blog/img/fw-batsw.jpg"><img style="width: 50%;" src="//filestorage.chrisoft.org/blog/img/ssbsthumb_1536x1536_fw-batsw.jpg"></a> <br>First disassembly
in 2 years.
</div>
<p>A few things jumped out when I opened up the laptop for repasting.
The first, very obvious and somewhat worrying one is the mildly swollen
battery (also known as SpicyPillows). I did not ran the laptop a lot
during the first year, but the second year saw more usage with it
unplugged (still not as frequent as my ThinkPad X1 yoga 1st gen). The
swelling isn’t anywhere near extreme, and there’s not a significant
reduction of battery life since I got the machine. For this reason I’m
not yet very compelled to replace it. But I will definitely be
monitoring it much more closely from this point on, as it’s very well
known that SpicyPillows are potentially dangerous.</p>
<p>The second, less obvious one is also about a battery, but this time
the CMOS battery. It was completely flat. I was aware of a
<a href="https://community.frame.work/t/rework-instructions-for-11th-gen-mainboards-to-enable-powering-the-rtc-circuit-from-the-main-battery/26922">design
flaw</a> in these 11th gen Intel machines that the CMOS battery only
gets charged when the laptop is on AC power. However I’m not sure this
is the cause in my case as my laptop spends most of its lifetime powered
on and connected to AC power. While I do appreciate the original,
extremely detailed makeshift solution (which is under the “Archived”
section of the post linked above), I’m not comfortable with the idea of
scratching a trace off an expensive motherboard. Anyway now that there’s
a solution that doesn’t involve scratching a trace off the motherboard,
I’m going to install the
<a href="https://guides.frame.work/Guide/RTC+Battery+Substitution+on+11th+Gen+Intel%C2%AE+Core%E2%84%A2/203">RTC
battery substitute module</a> and update this post when that’s done.</p>
<h3 id="tocanch3" class="tvis">Other early adopter issues</h3>
<p>The touchpad is flaky. Being a touchpad hater as I am (and a
trackpoint user for more than half my life), I had to deal with it when
I’m on the go. A few months ago I found that physical clicks on the
touchpad no longer works, and apparently I’m not the only one.
<a id="n1" href="#note1" class="note">[1]</a> There appears to be a
<a href="https://framework.kustomer.help/articles/-SJQQqt2Hu">simple
fix</a> which consists of a single step that sounds a little ridiculous
(“Try pressing the bottom middle of the Touchpad firmly a few times”),
but it worked for me.</p>
<p>I do venture out to become an early adopter of certain products
sometimes, My ThinkPad X1 yoga 1st gen being another example where
Lenovo experimented with the “yoga” form factor in their ThinkPad
line-up for the first time. Being an early(-ish) adopter of the
Framework laptop, I fully expected that there could be issues. So far
I’ve come across the CMOS battery design flaw, touchpad issue, BIOS
bugs, unreasonable level of CPU throttling and fingerprint reader driver
overheating the power button. None of these are severe enough to be a
deal breaker for me, and all of the listed issues have been more or less
fixed. I guess my overall experience of being an early adopter has been
overall positive.</p>
<h3 id="tocanch4" class="tvis">How well did it hold up?</h3>
<p>Performance wise, it’s still a beast in its class. These Willow Cove
cores still eats the Rust compilation workload that I now have to deal
with on a daily basis as breakfast. Gaming still is an option for me
considering the only game that I play nowadays is Minecraft, but is
likely a no-no for any heavier games. While it’s not the most power
efficient solution available today, it still meets the requirements of
my setup just fine.</p>
<p>Battery life isn’t too great in the first place. But the lifetime
seems to hold up decently despite having a slightly swollen battery
pack. Again, still fulfills my needs.</p>
<p>Internals…
<a href="//filestorage.chrisoft.org/blog/img/fw-fanfilth.jpg">don’t look
great</a> (CW: filthy looking fan). The fan seems to attract dust much
faster than the one in my ThinkPad X1 yoga.</p>
<h3 id="tocanch5" class="tvis">Random rants</h3>
<p>I still find the default fan curve of the laptop downright stupid.
Ramping it up to 80% of full speed at 60°C doesn’t seem wise to me. Yes
there are third party tools that can force a fan speed, but I’d rather
program a more sane fan curve instead.</p>
<p>Intel’s Xe driver for Windows is still hot garbage for graphics
development.</p>
<p>I do not like the forum software Framework uses (Discourse). The idea
of infinite scrolling never clicked with me. You simultaneously get the
worst from pagination and single-paged designs. And their page search is
still crippled to this day. Okay I’ll stop here and keep my other 10
objections to Discourse with myself.</p>
<h2 id="tocanch6" class="tvis">Contemplating upgrades</h2>
<p>Framework promised to provide an upgrade path to owners of their
laptops and they delivered. Now I have the choice of replacing the
motherboard in my Framework with a 12th/13th gen Intel board, or a Zen 4
based AMD board. I’ve explained why I didn’t upgrade to the 12th gen
Intel board in my previous post, and I’ll state the most important part
here again: I don’t want to ditch my old board that’s perfectly
functional. I’ll also say the silent part that was omitted in the
previous post aloud: I don’t want to purchase the extra parts to build a
complete computer out of the old board either.</p>
<p>There are additional reasons that I didn’t upgrade to specific
available boards. 13th gen Intel boards are especially objectionable due
to the fact that they still use DDR4 memory. This is year 2023 and DDR5
memory isn’t hard to find now. Yes I guess you get to keep your old
memory sticks, but I don’t want an upgrade that seems half-baked thank
you very much.</p>
<p>AMD boards seem way more compelling, especially considering the
performance boost they could bring at the price point they are sold at.
But I’ve heard that they produce pretty much the exact same noise as the
original boards once installed, runs as hot under heavy load, and would
result in increased pain just by the virtue of being AMD <a id="n2" href="#note2" class="note">[2]</a>.
And I would need to reconfigure the entire kernel <a id="n3" href="#note3" class="note">[3]</a>. For this reason
I’ve pretty much shelved the idea of upgrading the motherboard in the
very near future. The only reason for a motherboard upgrade for me now
would be the old one straight up failing or become unsuitable for my
tasks.</p>
<p>There is one upgrade I want to make though. I would absolutely love
to replace the glossy screen from factory with the new matte one. I was
never a fan of glossy screens on any laptop and will take a matte
replacement any day of the week. The price is a little steep though.</p>
<p>There’s another upgrade that I’d love to get. A trackpoint keyboard
with proper mouse buttons. I’m sure Lenovo would do anything to sabotage
it, but I can always dream.</p>
</article>
</div><br><hr>
<div class="TText" id="notediv" style="font-size:80%;"><span class="TText"><a id="note1" href="#n1">[1]</a>:
<a href="https://community.frame.work/t/touchpad-clicking-issues/37059">[1]</a>
<a href="https://community.frame.work/t/touchpad-click-not-working-and-getting-loose/16408">[2]</a>
<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note2" href="#n2">[2]</a>: their
crappy GPU driver being a major PITA for me – my experience with AMD
graphics seems very inconsistent with most Linux users. No I refuse to
elaborate here because that would derail the entire post.<br></span><span class="TText"><a id="note3" href="#n3">[3]</a>: Because I
run Gentoo. Now laugh at me as you wish.<br></span></div>
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