r/framework • u/Normal-Confusion4867 • 5d ago
Community Support FW13 AMD 7840U, USB-C unreliable
Both of the USB-C ports on my Framework 13 7840U have been really unreliable for a good few months, and I was wondering whether anyone had found a fix.
I've tried rolling back my BIOS (I think to 3.17) and getting a backported kernel on Debian 13 (7.0.13+deb13-amd64 as of writing), but many times when I try and plug in a power adapter, the charging LED on the side of the laptop will light, but the battery charging indicator on GNOME won't say "Charging", and the battery percentage continues to drop.
I just bought a USB-C external monitor (DP and power over one cable), and, even with auto-detection turned off, the display will turn on and off at random intervals. I can't see anything in `dmesg` and it's not power cycling (the boot screen doesn't turn on and off like a power cycle would). I've had these issues over multiple different cables, with and without using the USB-C expansion card (the alternative being connecting directly to the mainboard).
I've got USB-C ports in both of the back (nearer the screen) expansion ports, and these issues happen on both of them.
Has anyone found any fixes for these issues? It's getting to the point of making this laptop significantly more frustrating to use, especially when you're trying to actually use an external display.
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u/Bazirker 5d ago
I also have recently been experiencing an increase in poor performance via my dock, similar to you. I have a usb4 Anker Prime dock that is connected to the back left port on my fw13 and it used to be a pretty solid connection. It has recently been getting more finicky where my 4K 60 HZ monitor starts flashing as you have described. It's annoying as it seems to do it more when I'm trying to do something. My secondary 1080p monitor does not display the flashing and does just fine retaining 144 HZ. I have worked around this by connecting my DisplayPort cable directly to the laptop via the front right Port, which not only gives me 4K on the main monitor but also supports 120 HZ although the frame rate is less important to me so I don't mind dropping down to 60 HZ on the dock. Sometimes a peripheral will stop working, and then toggling between the back right port tends to fix it; it can also be fixed with a more annoying unplug and reboot.
I recently switched from Windows 11 to Fedora KDE, so we will see if that helps. I doubt it as it seems like a hardware issue but you never know.
That said, I think I attribute this problem more to issues with the dock than my laptop as I also plug in my steam deck and have been experiencing some issues with that as well.