Laptop Issue

[ngraham20]

Device Information

System Model or SKU

Framework Laptop 16 (AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series)

BIOS VERSION

3.05

DIY Edition information

If you are experiencing an issue on a DIY system, Please also fill out the memory and storage devices you are using.

Memory: A-DATA Technology AD5S560032G-SFW
Storage: WD_BLACK SN850X 2000GB and WD PC SN740 SDDPTQD-1T00

The following are for Laptop 16 only.
AMD 7700S dedicated GPU

Standalone Operation

Are you running your mainboard as a standalone device. Is standalone mode enabled in the BIOS?

• Yes
• No

Describe the bug

When the laptop battery level is higher than the BIOS-set maximum, the GPU wattage is unstable and low. CPU cores also spike.

Steps To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Charge laptop to 100%
2. Set the maximum battery life to something lower (i.e. 80%)
3. Play a game (in my case Minecraft with shaders), basically something to “push” your system hard.
4. very shortly, you should experience lag, low FPS, programs crashing, and possible audio glitches. Here’s a video of what happens to me under these circumstances: https://youtu.be/LsLGI1YMoW0
5. The instant that the battery reaches the limit you set (80% in this example), the glitch will suddenly disappear and stay gone

Expected behavior

GPU wattage should stay high and stable during use

Screenshots (actually videos)

https://youtu.be/LsLGI1YMoW0
https://youtube.com/watch?v=K8WdzVXsmns

Operating System (please complete the following information):

• OS/Distribution: [Bazzite Linux (also reproduced on Fedora 41 Live USB]
• Linux Kernel Version: Linux bazzite 6.14.3-101.bazzite.fc42.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Apr 23 13:07:40 UTC 2025 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Additional context

Framework Forum Post

Pasted from the forum post

Here’s why it appeared to be totally random:

I had the maximum charge set to 100%
I had the battery life saver enabled (which it is by default)

At first it was extremely random. It would sometimes happen multiple times a day, and sometimes would disappear for days on end. I finally realized that one thing was consistent, though it took me months to realize: unplugging the laptop would cause this to happen, and if it stayed plugged in for long enough, it disappeared.

Why did this cause this issue? Basically, with the battery saver enabled, every so often, the maximum charge threshold will be reduced by some amount. Maybe 5%, maybe less, I’m not sure. For a brief period of time after that reduction occurs, the laptop will be above the maximum charge, causing the glitch for however long it takes to drop the charge by that amount. If you play a very power-hungry game, this will be extremely short or even happen so fast it doesn’t visibly occur at all. However, if you play a game that isn’t all that power hungry, you might actually notice it due to the power dropping slower.

This happened primarily in Balanced and Performance profiles, but much more infrequently in Battery Saver. I believe this is because battery saver is battery-aware and that somehow interacts with whatever’s at the root of this issue.

I have been in contact with FW support since February, and I want to have a single point of reference for all of this information going forward, so here are all of the symptoms and non-symptoms I noticed and what I believe that rules out.

• Software/OS: I have reproduced this on Bazzite and Fedora 41 Live USB. I don’t have Windows, so I haven’t tested that. It may be specific to Linux, but I don’t know. Since it presents itself as a BIOS thing, I doubt it.
• Thermal Throttling: All thermals are well within acceptable limits before, during, and after the issue
• RAM Throttling: Only 20% of my total RAM is ever in use during this entire process
• CPU Throttling: This one is interesting. When playing the game, the CPU cores are as expected. One core is more used than the others, and the rest are mostly unused due to games being single-threaded. However, you’ll see in this video I took that during the issue, in certain situations, all CPU cores will suddenly go completely maxed out, even though the game is single-threaded. Mega weird, and I don’t know what causes this, but I do think this is why other programs (like my audio mixer) crash when this happens.
• Battery Issues: As mentioned above, somehow the battery level is responsible. I don’t know why, but when the battery level is above the BIOS-set maximum, the issue occurs for the entire duration of time that it remains above the set value. It’s not specifically a high-power or low-power issue, simply being above the set value. Basically, I don’t think this is a TDP issue.
• Problematic RAM: I tried a ram shuffle at Framework Support’s request, but that didn’t have any affect
• Problematic SSD: I have reproduced this on two different SSDs and one Live USB
• Disk encryption: I have tried this with and without disk encryption
• Expansion Card Issues: I can reproduce this issue both with and without any expansion cards plugged in.

For a while, I thought this only occurred with Albion Online, which sent me into a wild goose chase tracking down whether it was Albion’s fault. However, my hypothesis is that because Albion is not a power-hungry game, the battery spent more time being above the maximum charge like I mentioned before, while games like GTFO would drain that amount much more quickly, making it less likely for the bug to trigger or simply to resolve itself so quickly it wasn’t noticed.

If anyone is able to reproduce this (or better yet, if you’ve found a proper fix), I would be extremely grateful, as I worry that there may be a hardware issue occurring making this unique to my machine.

If you have seen this on your machine, I have a workaround for you that is perfectly acceptable!

Turn off the battery lifetime saver in BIOS
Set the maximum battery life to something lower than 100% (I chose 60%, but really anything should work)

For some reason, being set to 100%, even with battery life saver off this issue occasionally occurs. I don’t know why.

I will continue to update/edit this post with everything I’ve tried as I attempt more things. Since I have found quite a good workaround though, they likely won’t be frequent.

[quinchou77]

We have an issue 33 is about the battery drain with the AC adapter. It didn't switch the power limit correctly. I believe the issue you encountered might be related to this. We'll use your information to investigate if this is the root cause or if there are other contributing factors.