Last summer, we reviewed a fully modular laptop with swappable ports and replaceable parts, the Framework Laptop. It created a lot of buzz in the lead-up to its release. The reason: This system is meant to be both upgradable and sustainable, letting you buy and replace almost every individual component if any one stops working properly in the future, or if you’d like to upgrade certain parts.
The company is now delivering on the upgrade promise of its flagship Framework Laptop, releasing a 12th Gen Intel Upgrade Kit that allows you to swap out the system’s entire motherboard and install a new board with a more recent processor embedded.
Armed with a detailed step-by-step online guide that Framework provides to its users, Executive Editor John Burek and I took on the task of removing the mainboard (as Framework refers to the unit) that came with our original Framework Laptop and replacing it with the upgrade kit. Our original laptop came with an 11th Generation chip, so this is a generational upgrade, not just a fresh swap of the same CPU.
The video above chronicles the whole process as we follow the guide and narrate along, with more details below. Framework’s guide lists the total time of the task at 10 to 15 minutes, and while it took us a bit longer to pause for filming and narrating, you can watch this recap of our work.
Understanding the Framework Laptop and Upgrade Kit
To be able to get into the upgrades discussion, let’s back up to the Framework Laptop itself. In our 2021 review, we wrote how the system’s clever and accessible modular design impressed us, and created a potential roadmap for making future laptops more sustainable and reusable.
If a single part breaks, even the display or keyboard, the chassis is designed to be opened or dismantled to let you remove and replace just that part. Every interior part includes a QR code so you can scan and order a replacement, and removal is made much more user-friendly than your average laptop. Additionally, even the ports come as modules that plug into slots on the chassis, so you can change what connections you have and where they are situated.
If you want to upgrade the processor in a laptop, it’s tied to the mainboard, and in almost all laptops that’s impossible. In the case of the Framework, this is where the company’s new 12th Gen Upgrade Kit comes in. The Kit comes in three price and power tiers, all with Intel 12th Generation Core “P”-series chips. The starting version is $538 for an Intel Core i5-1240P, the middle unit is a Core i7-1260P for $788, and the top option is a Core i7-1280P for $1,138.
We were sent the middle (Core i7-1260P) kit for evaluation. This processor bears 12 total cores (four Performance cores and eight Efficient cores) with support for up to 16 concurrent processing threads. The P-core and E-core format is intrinsic to the 12th Generation “Alder Lake” architecture; you can read more about it in our Alder Lake explainer.
The Upgrade Kits also come with a new lid, letting you swap the top panel so you can feel like it’s a new laptop with a fresh cover when you install your new CPU. Framework provides additional guides for every part it offers replacements for, including aspects like storage, the keyboard, the display, the battery, the webcam, and everything in between.
Those prices do come off as a bit expensive considering the overall cost of a whole laptop. Obviously, a processor and the board make up a large portion of any laptop’s cost, but part of the concept is committing to this design and sustainability, so any associated premium for replacements is part of the package. You can also directly purchase a 12th Gen version of the Framework Laptop starting at $1,049 (or the DIY Edition starting at $819) if you don’t own the original.
With all of that explained, let’s jump into the process, and how it went for us.
Always Let Your Guide Be Your…Guide
Motherboard-swapping in a laptop may seem intimidating if you’ve never tinkered with a PC before, but we have to give kudos to Framework for its online guide. Apart from a couple of small aspects that could have been a touch clearer, the provided guide walks you through replacing the board thoroughly and effectively.
At its core, the process is simple: open up the laptop, disconnect the old board, and attach the new board. Fortunately, the reality isn’t that far off from this—our time was largely spent unscrewing a few screws, disconnecting a few cables, and reattaching the new board in reverse fashion. Before doing anything, Framework recommends updating the laptop to Windows 11, so we went ahead and pushed the OS update through, which didn’t take long. If it doesn’t show up in the laptop’s pending updates, you can get a manual install from Microsoft’s site.
The replacement process starts with removing all of the Framework Laptop’s trademark “port modules” and unscrewing the screws on the bottom panel, allowing you to pull off the keyboard deck to expose the interior. As a refresher: The Framework Laptop’s ports, such as HDMI and USB, are all installed as removable pieces that park in two bays on either side of the chassis. You can swap these modules around, or in and out.
One of the slightly trickier parts here is remembering not to just pull the keyboard deck away quickly, because a delicate ribbon cable for the keyboard and touchpad links the input panel to the board. This cable includes a clever finger loop (which we’d like to see more of) to pull it free, though, allowing you to continue on after a simple yank.
From there, it’s a matter of disconnecting the various audio, video, and battery cables from the old motherboard, five in all. The guide includes photos for every step (and a couple of videos, although videos for every part wouldn’t have hurt), circling the connections and smaller parts when needed. The battery cable was slightly tricky to detach due to its shape and side-mounting plug. The display, speaker, and webcam cables were straightforward, while the audio cable, a tiny ribbon cable, gave us the most trouble. (Again, to see all of this more specifically, check out the video up top.)
The audio cable was the most finicky due to its shape, a small ribbon cable that goes into an equally small slot, with a super-slim lever to flip that locks it into place. You can identify it as the bright blue header in the image below, near the lower left. This gave us a little trouble when disconnecting it, and more when reconnecting it to the new board. All of these connectors are rather small, and this cable in particular took a little gentle experimenting to see how it works.
This was not one of the steps in the guide that had a video, either, and the provided photo wasn’t quite zoomed in enough to be helpful, so this was the biggest stumbling block through the whole process. Even so, that sounds a bit more dramatic than it was—this added only a few minutes of fiddling to our overall time.
Next up was the Wi-Fi module, shown on the right edge of the photo, in the next image below. It is probably the next-most-complicated part, given it has a screw holding it down, plus a guide bracket for the Wi-Fi antenna wires, and requires some light cable routing to handle. The M.2 SSD storage module is much simpler, requiring just one screw removed before being pulled free.
Removing the SO-DIMM memory is a middle ground between just pulling a cable free and needing to fully unscrew something. Like on a desktop, the memory modules can be pulled out after releasing some clips on either side of the module. Simple, and standard fare for laptop memory upgrades.
All of this complete, we were able to unscrew the final five screws holding the mainboard to the chassis of the Framework Laptop, and pull the mainboard away. As you may have guessed, installing the new board and its 12th Gen chip is much the same process, but in reverse. Below is the new mainboard (with the Alder Lake chip parked beneath the heat sink to the right of the cooling fan), ready to be installed into the old chassis.
After screwing the new board in place (taking care not to pin any of the loose cables under it), you plug the five key cables back in. There are a couple tricky aspects here, chiefly dealing with the audio cable (it was more difficult to reconnect than detach due to the size) and taking care not to bend the battery connector’s internal pins. Additionally, making sure the cables on the Wi-Fi module were routed cleanly (the instructions explain what to look out for) before screwing the bracket back on added an extra few minutes.
Once this reverse process was complete, we reattached the keyboard deck ribbon cable, put the keyboard panel back on, screwed it all back together, and powered the system up. It did take a minute to recognize and boot its new brains, but the Framework Laptop booted and loaded into Windows 11 with no issue and recognized the 12th Generation processor straightaway. Framework does also provide a new bundle of Windows 11 drivers for when the machine is back up and running, so make sure to install that so your system is fully operational.
Verdict: The Framework Delivers on Its Concept
All told, the upgrade process was painless and straightforward. The guide was (mostly) quite clear, each step explained with text and photos, and it didn’t leave anything out. While we found it easy, we do also have a lot of experience building computers, so Framework’s overall “moderate” difficulty rating (the middle of three ratings) on this guide is fair.
The guide website has a similar walkthrough for every type of part you can order, should that bolster your confidence on taking the leap with the Framework Laptop. The concept is commendable, and hopefully continues to exist both on its own, and as a model for future sustainability. Framework sent along a keyboard replacement, as well, but we didn’t undertake that at the same time as the board; you can see the replacement “input cover” below.
The fact that Framework has made it to the point where a processor upgrade is possible is a good sign. We didn’t run fresh benchmark tests on this laptop as part of this hands-on experience, but I wouldn’t expect most owners of the 11th Generation Framework Laptop to need or want the jump to 12th Generation Core just yet. This generational jump is generally notable, based on what we have seen in 11th Gen versus 12th Gen processors in other laptops. But for the price of the upgrade kit, in this instance, it’s not a no-brainer upgrade on the basis of pure performance.
Still, some performance hounds may want the added speed, and for new shoppers considering a standalone Framework Laptop, you may as well purchase the latest (12th) generation of the entire laptop from the get-go. Overall, we think the laptop itself and upgradability are a hit—read the full laptop review and enjoy the videos there and here to get a full view of the process if you’re interested. But we think the Framework Laptop will truly come into its own if and when you can go from, say, the original 11th Gen Core to, say, a future 13th or 14th Gen Core motherboard.
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