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$39 Cooler Master case turns your old Framework Laptop parts into a tiny PC
- e2e4 4y agohttps://frame.work/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case https://frame.work/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case
- e2e4 4y agoNice idea: "Universal mounting Supports VESA 100mm x 100mm mounting"
- shaftway 4y agoVESA 100mm x 100mm through-mounting would be so money. If I could bolt this to the back of my monitor sandwiched between the monitor and the stand I'd be so happy.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoIt would be nice if they'd offer something FCC compliant rather than unshielded eye candy.
- Waterluvian 4y agoWould you mind elaborating? I’m not sure what to look for that would raise that concern. I’m guessing something about the wifi antenna?
- doublespanner 4y agoThe grey hairs want all computers to exist inside beige metal boxes.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LBJsPNS 4y agoAnd the gray beards want something that won't throw off so much RF you can pick it up in your fillings. You don't need a beige box for that, just something that's had five minutes of actual engineering applied to it.
- mynonameaccount 4y agoaluminum foil is for hats
- xwdv 4y agoAll computer hardware like this emits some amount of electromagnetic interference. Although it looks cool to have a computer that is just a bare open board, the reality is you should really be shielding your hardware. It may not look as cool, but it’s kinder to the surrounding environment and respectful of others. Otherwise this is like the computer equivalent of running loud aftermarket exhausts on some shitty car. Not cool or smart.
- Waterluvian 4y agoIn principle I completely agree. But I’m equal measures ignorant and skeptical of this topic. How much EM radiation can those parts emit? Is this a problem in theory, or is it all but guaranteed to screw with other devices?
- Alupis 4y agoThe flimsy plastic case your laptop came in is no better or worse. People need something to complain about. Most of the shielding is done with metal lids/cans on the board already. Not to mention I'm unsure what the original complaint even was - the Framework laptop has a lengthy list of certifications, including ones from the FCC[1]. [1] https://downloads.frame.work/manuals/Framework-Online-User-Manual-Chromebook.pdf https://downloads.frame.work/manuals/Framework-Online-User-M...
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoThe flimsy plastic case has a conductive spray on the inside. That's how it becomes legal for sale.
- Alupis 4y agoThis is a professionally manufactured case, made by Cooler Master and designed by Framework, for first-party sale within the US.
- 4y ago
- 83457 4y agoonly slightly related https://www.ukqrm.org.uk/your-story.php https://www.ukqrm.org.uk/your-story.php https://qrm.guru/tracking-down-interference-in-the-2m-amateur-band/ https://qrm.guru/tracking-down-interference-in-the-2m-amateu...
- komali2 4y agoI'm genuinely curious about this because I've always seen all the fcc stickers and never bothered to think much beyond "oh nice that means it won't electroshock me I guess?" I didn't realize they were about actual electromagnetic interference. So like, what's bad about that? For example, I life in an apartment with concrete walls, ceiling, and floor. Is there a risk I'll affect my neighbor's pacemaker with my extensive collection of electronics, probably many of which are poorly shielded? Is this affecting my network cables running hither thither in the apartment, or the switch plopped on top of a pile of cords with a raspberry pi sitting bare on top of it? My steam link downstairs? Is it causing cancer? Making my audio quality worse in my speakers? Basically, what should I be worried about, here?
- ruytlm 4y agoI really like this as a way to repurpose old hardware; I have known many laptops that end up sitting around in cupboards after their 'useful' life is over, that could probably still comfortably be serving as lightweight desktops even today.
- clnq 4y agoYes, or servers. I've been searching for ways to convert an older Dell laptop mainboard into a simple server. It has great power consumption on account of being a laptop logic board, and enough power to run serious server workloads. Unfortunately, I do not think a universal product for reusing laptop logic boards exists. Although it might be easy enough to make. All ports on the logic board could be wired up to a backplate in the case with extension cables. Airflow could be controlled by temperature inside. Only designing a solder-less power button extension and a universal mount for mainboards in the case might be challenging. It is really wasteful to throw away old laptop hardware which could be made into either low-end PCs, or game emulator consoles, or home servers, or NAS devices.
- jareklupinski 4y agoInteresting... don't most older laptops have some sort of docking mechanism that exposed basically every connection? The physical interface wasn't the same for every laptop, but with a common backplane it should be possible to make a seperate docking connector daughterboard for the most popular laptops taking up cupboard space. I would love to collab on an open-source dock that turns laptops into servers :)
- clnq 4y agoDocking, not necessarily. Laptops have ports all over the place: on the left, on the right, on the back, and sometimes even on the front (like the 3.5mm jack for headphones). You could probably use only one USB port on the laptop and integrate a hub into the case. But for ethernet, audio, and HDMI, you'd probably need cables. The nice thing about cables in the box is that adapters could be used. If a laptop comes with VGA out only, that can be adapted to HDMI. If there are separate audio out and in jacks, those can be combined with an adapter. If there is no ethernet jack, it could be added with a USB network card. There are also adapters for laptop power supply cables for the C13/C14 three-pin interface. So a lot of work can be done inside the case by the person building a desktop/console/server out of a laptop. But no one is selling a universal case with a backplate. And desktop cases are difficult to work with because they expect a backplate from a motherboard. Really, the product could be just an I/O backplate that mounts to standard ATX stand-offs/screws and takes extension cables, plus something to regulate fan speeds by temperature that also has fan headers. The power button might be a challenge for the builder to solve, but with very minor soldering, most power buttons integrated in any case would work.
- mananaysiempre 4y agoAlso pointed out in a comment several days ago, leading to some discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35282851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35282851.
- pengaru 4y agoNo compartment for the battery to have an integrated UPS? Seems like a missed opportunity considering the integrated charging circuit is already there and sorted out...
- nrp 4y agoWe thought about this, but at the point that you want to add the space for a battery, picking up an extra Bottom Cover for a Framework Laptop becomes a plausible path. We worked with Cooler Master to make this case as minimal as possible.
- pengaru 4y agoLove how you guys engage the community directly like this. I just think it would have produced a genuinely differentiated desktop PC offering moving more units, if it could have optionally accepted the laptop battery somewhere like behind the mainboard... Also creates someplace useful for a tired framework battery to live a second life when refreshing one's laptop.
- poink 4y agoI was definitely skeptical of Framework at first, but it seems like they're committing to their pluggable module concept and supporting their OG users. Way more interested in them now.
- ktaylora 4y agoThis is cool. What I really want is to be able to build an array of these. Like turn a stack of old fleet framework laptops (or lenovo laptops -- something cheap and plentiful) into a little closet Kubernetes cluster. A bit like people do with raspberry pi's (k3s). Has anyone seen work out there to this end?
- efficax 4y agoyou could build a beowulf cluster with those
- btgeekboy 4y agoI’ve seen a few twists on that idea, such as this one: https://www.printables.com/model/416934-framework-as-a-server https://www.printables.com/model/416934-framework-as-a-serve...
- ktaylora 4y agoYes! I knew it was out there somewhere. Thank you.
- guywithahat 4y agoI know framework is a popular company on tech forums but it's always felt like a solution in search of a problem. Laptops I own that only have a CPU are rarely computationally bounded in what I'm trying to do, by the time the CPU is showing its age the battery and case are usually showing their age too. But lets say I need the most up to date CPU and can't wait, why would I now need a desktop computer with no expandability based on hardware worse than my laptop? And what will I do again in ~3 years when I replace the motherboard again and now have three computers with increasingly aging hardware. This feels like a solution to a non existent problem
- ThemalSpan 4y agoI think the problem exists: the externalities of the approach to laptops you're describing are very bad. Framework is trying to promote the three R's to help combat this. Reduce, reuse, and recycle.
- lantry 4y agoI have several old laptops that I use as home servers. I replaced the HDD with SSD and pulled out the dead batteries so they only run on wall power. They're less powerful than my current laptop but you don't need that much power to run most things when it's only serving a handful of users.
- eyegor 4y agoYou gotta be careful doing that with modern ssds, they generally fail instantly with no warning signs. I've never seen smart data report under 90% but I've seen tons of modern ssds fail in a year or less. I wish they would just be DOA, it's rare to see one to fail between 2-5 years old without heavy workloads. At least with hard drives you can hear them fail when you walk by. (Not only from the samsung firmware bug, I've personally seen about a dozen of these failures in the past 2 years alone. Drive quality went down the drain during covid.)
- sonzohan 4y agoThere are three problems it solves: 1. Upgrading is cheaper than a whole new system. This saves consumers money. Modern laptops increasingly solder parts down, making upgrades nigh-impossible (I've tried multiple times). Most tech companies have trade-in programs, but with dismal exhange rates. This gives the user more options and control over their hardware. 2. Countering planned obsolence and expensive repair costs associated with modern products. 3. Enabling upcycling, repurposing, and reducing ewaste. There are a fair number of environmentally conscious people in tech and tech-adjacent industries.
- chromakode 4y agoI repurposed my original 11th gen board as a home server running a NAS and NVR, among other things. [1] These boards are going to kick ass for a long time because of the IO. USB 3.2 can handle 10Gbps, enough for a SATA drive array. Thunderbolt 4 goes up to 40Gbps. All current Intel Framework boards come with four TB4 ports. It is frankly a challenge to make use of all of the bandwidth on my mid-tier original board. Hopefully 10Gbe adapters will go down in price. As Framework owners upgrade, the price of these boards will continue to drop, and a lot of interesting projects will be within reach. [1] https://mastodon.social/@chromakode/109385742918733517 https://mastodon.social/@chromakode/109385742918733517
- atlgator 4y agoI love what framework is doing but the fundamental choice of laptop for me is always battery life. If I can't pull the laptop off the dock in the morning and ride into the office without packing a charger, I'm not a buyer. MacBooks are the only laptops doing this reliably.
- angoragoats 4y agoThis is demonstrably false — I have two 2018 Thinkpad T480 laptops, one running Windows and the other Linux. The windows one gets around 11 hours of moderate use per charge, and the Linux one about 10. And I bought these used with batteries that had quite a few cycles on them already. Laptops with long battery life are out there; Apple machines are not the only option!
- philliphaydon 4y ago[dead]
- earhart 4y agoFWIW, Framework also announced a new battery with the same form factor but another 10%-ish capacity. And because the system's amazingly easy to disassemble, if your battery starts to lose capacity, it's trivial to swap in a replacement. I do the "unplug and spend a couple of hours hacking without a charger" thing all the time with mine, and mine's using the previous-generation battery. Not running Windows seems to help a surprising amount.
- AndroidKitKat 4y agoI've noticed the exact opposite with my 11th gen i5 Framework (purchased in December 2021). For the life of me, I cannot figure out why my Framework laptop seems to massively drain battery life when I am using Linux. I've tried just about every distro under the sun (Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, Gentoo, and even FreeBSD) and I consistently get a battery drain of like 7-10% every 20 minutes doing something simple like watching a YouTube video, reading things in Firefox reader mode, and having an IRC client open. When I said "screw it" and installed Windows, seemingly my battery woes went away. I used pretty much the same programs (Firefox and Weechat) on both operating systems and I'm pretty much completely stumped. I thought about asking out to Framework support but I don't know what good that would do. Another issue I've had is not being able to let the thing sit overnight not on the charger since it drains about 10% an hour with the lid closed in both Windows and Linux, so I'm having to remember to leave it plugged in or know that I'm going to be tethered to the wall in the morning. Regardless of those negatives, I think Framework as a company has done some pretty tremendous things in the laptop space and I hope they continue to do so in the future.
- diceduckmonk 4y agoWhat a weird colloboration. Now take my money!
- koala_man 4y agoThe interesting thing about this is not the case itself, but that we're starting to see novel benefits from having open, modular laptop hardware.
- ummonk 4y agoHave they standardized the motherboard form factor? Could we start seeing third party motherboards to drop in to a Framework Laptop?
- esarbe 4y agoAll the specs are available for interested 3rd parties.
- plaguepilled 4y agoI'm actually very happy to see this because to me its a great business play by CoolerMaster: 1. It positions itself as part of the pro-repair crowd, which is already the crowd that supports building your own machine, and therefore buying CoolerMaster cases. That builds consumer trust. 2. It supports the framework ecosystem, strengthening the incentive to buy a framework laptop for more people - who could later purchase one of these cases as their needs change.
- tomrod 4y agoThis might breath life back into my Gen 11,which has a graphics problem. Would to have it live as a fileserver.
- m463 4y agoI thought it would be cool to have a case for these old parts, and I'm happy to see they've thought about it and done it. Now why not give it a catchy name? LUC - Last Unit of Computing NOOC - Not Out Of Commission (or probably a better acronym)
- 29athrowaway 4y agoDoes it have a power supply unit?
- theshrike79 4y agoIt's a laptop, you can run it with any USB-C power supply that has enough power. "all you need for a powered up computer is the Cooler Master Mainboard Case, memory, storage, WiFi or an Ethernet Expansion Card, USB-C Power Adapter and a display."
- lonesword 4y agoI love the size of that case. I've been looking for a tiny case that can fit a GPU. This doesn't look like that though. It doesn't have to fit the largest GPU - I'd be happy if it can fit a gtx 3060. Does anyone have recommendations? This[1] is the closest I could find and it fits a 4090. But it's still biggish and costs $280, which is a bit too much to spend on a case. [1] https://formdworks.com/collections/t1-1/products/t1-sandwich-kit-titanium-color https://formdworks.com/collections/t1-1/products/t1-sandwich...
- jackpeterfletch 4y agoThese would make a great blade server rack :p
- Netcob 4y agoThe whole Framework idea is something I never even dared to wish for. I always wanted to build a laptop the way I build a desktop. And I recently built a HTPC by dismantling my custom-built file server, and a device made from recycled laptop parts would have made much more sense. I don't have much use for a laptop at the moment (my current one is from 2017 and I hardly use it), but if I did, I'd go for a Framework in an instant.
- ZiiS 4y agoBe so nice to have VESA mounts so it sandwiched between a monitor and the stand.
- hellweaver666 4y agoI've been daily driving various Macs since the release of the Mac Mini in 2023. I love the "it just works" promise of the hardware but honestly I'm not terribly excited about the software these days, especially all the cloud stuff. Once my current hardware snuffs it there is a very high chance that a Framework laptop will be my next machine.
- nottorp 4y agoHmm what's the power consumption of these (parts of) laptops? And how bad it is power wise and cpu wise to have usb-c ethernet instead of pci? Thinking home server here.
- yurishimo 4y agoTo you question regarding Ethernet, USB-C is capable of running faster than gigabit. I think it's around 5 gigabit? The PCIe lane from an add-in card is still being used in either case. The power difference would be negligible.
- nottorp 4y agoBut at what CPU usage cost? And thus, power usage. On the CPU side not the adapter side.
- AndroidKitKat 4y agoI think it would be really cool if there was a way to make one of these that repurpose the laptop display port as a built in DisplayPort or find a way to make a power adapter (maybe Ethernet, too?) not take up one of the 4 available ports. That would make it an insta-buy for me since otherwise I'm having to plug in a keyboard, mouse, and display and I'm left with a portless desktop machine.
- kfarr 4y agoTotally or even have a case with a touch screen display built in like some RPi setups
- hgsgm 4y ago> Framework’s mainboards, which come in its 13-inch laptop and are also sold separately as of 2022, are composed of the motherboard So now we can set up a full Framework mini-desktop, but not ITX standard? Is Framework stuff compatible with ITX specs? Or is this a new "standard" form factor?
- guerrilla 4y agoOkay this is good. I hope what we're seeing here is another revolution like the original PC "open architecture" but one that's usable for laptops and possibly other devices. Still, the original components themselves aren't open source, right? Just the interfaces like PCs?
- 71a54xd 4y agoI'm sort of disappointed they didn't just release STL files! Although, I wonder if PLA could hold up to the temperatures of using this as a server with decent workloads (I assume it could but not sure).
- ewalk153 4y agoI want to build a pc from scratch with this. I was on the framework site last week looking for a compact desktop option to build an Debian system. *edit not Ubuntu given this post on the state of package management: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35354729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35354729
- readerbaza 4y agoWhy must it be an "old" laptop? Get a new board and use it like a portable desktop. I bet many people don't ever use those PCs but in 2 places (home, work)