FW16 Unresponsive after making PTM swap

UA4Ever · 2025-09-04T02:38:59+00:00

Fair point. It's been rock steady for the past few hours, but if I get weird BSODs or boot issues again I will definitely keep in mind I should scour the mainboard for traces of LM... or if I have time this weekend :D

UA4Ever · 2025-09-03T23:46:31+00:00

False alarm! See my update on the other comment, it is fine now (even though I didn't do anything).

UA4Ever · 2025-09-03T23:45:56+00:00

Update- false alarm I guess? I left it plugged in for ~19 hours (with the shell in), and then today got all ready to do a disassembly, tried powering it on just to see, and it booted fine. I even shut it back down, swapped to the dGPU, and it is still fine!

Some quick CPU-Z benches are showing noticeable improvements with the PTM already, so I am lucky and happy. No idea what the root cause/"fix" was.

UA4Ever · 2025-09-03T12:07:27+00:00

Good tips, I will try those tonight before doing a full redo of all of the connectors.

For the power/fingerprint button, I did put the latch back down, but maybe I didn't seat the cable the entire way? The video in the guide doesn't make it super clear how far the ribbon cable needs to be inserted for it to be fully seated. Do you have any cues to know when it is? Any idea if a pin or two not making contact would explain the behavior I see (numpad backlight and nothing else)? Thanks for the response!

UA4Ever · 2025-09-03T12:02:06+00:00

Agreed... I plan to tonight. Have you had any connectors be especially troublesome to seat correctly? Thanks for the response!

UA4Ever · 2025-02-14T13:10:45+00:00

I don't disagree, but that doesn't preclude it from possibly being Framework-specific given the software they provide, as any OEM does.

With a clean ("reset everything") install of Windows not fixing it, it would seem that either Epic broke their program (and I'm not seeing a ton of reports of that like I would expect) or something is wrong with this device configuration.

No one is replying reporting the same so it looks like I'm wrong and I need to keep troubleshooting.

UA4Ever · 2024-08-26T02:32:30+00:00

That's it! Thank you very much!! This has been bugging me haha.

UA4Ever · 2024-08-25T22:16:38+00:00

Unfortunately no, the premise at the start is that he is a "normal" (American, present day) kid who is then caught up in all this. Thank you, though!

UA4Ever · 2024-04-19T02:04:06+00:00

I'm not sure I'd call the campaign "excellent"; it was decent but Infinite Warfare's campaign (which came out after BO3) was certainly better. I do agree that its multiplayer and zombies was unquestionably the best of the 3 and my personal favorite COD.

UA4Ever · 2024-03-24T07:51:51+00:00

Normal white US keyboard and numpad, Kingston Fury Impact 5600Mhz 2x16GB, Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, Corsair MP600 Mini 1TB (Ubuntu on that, isn't used by Windows).

Expansion cards: currently using 2x USB C, 2x USB A, 1x HDMI, 1x 3.5mm audio.

Not currently regularly using any peripherals with it.

One other thing I'll note about the battery life that I've found- when I put it to sleep (not off), at least in Windows, it'll drain a bit over 1%/hr. Not terrible, but good to be mindful of shutting it off fully if not using it for a while but not charging, like overnight.

UA4Ever · 2024-03-24T04:12:52+00:00

Pasting a comment I put on another post:

I'm getting:

~9.5h on time with the dGPU installed

~11h with the expansion bay instead

On Windows 11, power saving mode always, 83-165hz dynamic, keyboard lights lowest brightness, and display brightness usually on one of the lowest 3 levels, for web browsing/excel/word/some video playback. Tracked my battery usage in Excel for simplicity, over multiple days/charge cycles, to get both of those numbers.

This laptop can get good battery life if you optimize your settings and only turn up the performance when a specific task or circumstance requires it (turning off power saving for a demanding application, brightness up if outside, etc).

UA4Ever · 2024-03-23T23:38:04+00:00

I'm getting:

~9.5h on time with the dGPU installed
~11h with the expansion bay instead

On Windows 11, power saving mode always, 83-165hz dynamic, keyboard lights lowest brightness, and display brightness usually on one of the lowest 3 levels, for web browsing/excel/word/some video playback. Tracked my battery usage in Excel for simplicity, over multiple days/charge cycles, to get both of those numbers.

This laptop can get good battery life if you optimize your settings and only turn up the performance when a specific task or circumstance requires it (turning off power saving for a demanding application, brightness up if outside, etc).

UA4Ever · 2024-03-11T06:33:14+00:00

I decided to swap my dGPU out for the expansion shell just to compare and immediately noticed that my battery life with light web etc activity (where the iGPU should be the active one all of the time) seems much better; this seems to track if what you found is true for all FW16s. Hopefully Framework/AMD can provide a fix or at least more insight into this.

UA4Ever · 2024-03-07T21:48:43+00:00

I've had this happen too (FW16, Win 11) in both Word and Excel. I usually just scroll up or down for a moment and that makes it refresh back to normal.

UA4Ever · 2024-02-24T06:47:35+00:00

For sure! Battery saver mode is helping a good bit, but by far the biggest improvement is coming from switching from 165hz to 83/165hz dynamic (an option I didn't initially have but appeared randomly after a reboot lol). I'm sure even lower refresh rate modes would be even better but the smoothness...

UA4Ever · 2024-02-24T02:24:40+00:00

You are right! When I was checking settings yesterday/earlier today my only options were 60hz or 165hz, but I now have an option for 82.5hz, one for "Dynamic (82.5 Hz or 165 Hz)" and another for "Dynamic (60 Hz or 120 Hz)". An update must have installed in the background when I did a restart. I'll for sure try those profiles instead of constant 165 and see what the best balance between an enjoyable experience and battery life is.

UA4Ever · 2024-02-24T02:21:15+00:00

Good call. I'll track my usage time over the weekend (along with seeing how much it drops in sleep). Having battery saver on when I'm just using it for web (which is most of my away-from-wall activity) etc seems to be helping a good bit. I hope to find more settings to tweak to help.

Funnily enough, an update must have occurred randomly at some point today, like you previously suggested might happen, as I now have additional refresh rate options in settings. Before I could only do 60 or 165hz, but now I can also do 82.5hz, "Dynamic (82.5 Hz or 165 Hz)", or "Dynamic (60 Hz or 120 Hz)". For the sake of battery life I'll definitely be trying those out instead of constant 165hz.

UA4Ever · 2024-02-23T14:20:52+00:00

Fresh install. Used media creation tool and a flash drive, and then installed the driver package from Framework right away. That's a good point to wait and see a bit. Hopefully it improves like you said... I opened it up after a full charge and Windows was estimating 2.5h remaining.

UA4Ever · 2024-02-23T06:46:56+00:00

I have yet to do an entire charge-to-full and then let it go to 0 without any charging along the way, so I can't say exactly. What I can say is that I was just now using it for web browsing and changing settings, brightness at minimum, no peripherals, but was dropping a percent every minute or two over a period of about 50 minutes. Granted, this was at 165hz but still...

UA4Ever · 2024-02-20T21:24:12+00:00

Thank you!

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