We Upgraded the Framework Laptop's Motherboard to 12th Gen 'Alder Lake,' and Here's How It Went
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(Opens in a new window) 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.
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
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