[soulnothing]

There was a note on Reddit that the ports / expansion cards were in the wrong way to maximize power efficiency. USB c in back two, USB a in the front.

Link to official comment https://www.reddit.com/r/framework/comments/16ytxjd/comment/...

Direct to knowledge base https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/expansion-card-functi...

[invalidator]

That's an interesting quirk! I thought they were all just USB-C ports internally. Do you know why this matters?

[mananaysiempre]

They are all USB-C as far as the physical interface goes, but their protocol capabilities are different: the rear ones are USB4 (actually full TB4 AFAIU, except Intel refuses to certify AMD systems), the front ones are USB3.2+DP and USB3.2. The fundamental reason seems to be that a “mobile CPU” is more of a SoC, including built-in USB capability, and (unlike the Intels) the AMD ones only do two USB4 ports, which on the Framework are routed to the rear.

This, then, is done through USB4-capable retimers, which turned out to draw noticeable power when a USB-A card with a pulldown is connected and idling; but no better retimers could be substituted. The front USB3.2 ports use different retimers and don’t suffer from this. (Why do the Intel motherboards not have this problem? No idea, but if I had to guess, Intel probably makes the retimers for those and is refusing to let them be used with AMD processors.)

[soulnothing]

Updated parent comment with links. The back 2 are USB 4 while the front are usb 3.2 is one thing.

Last I read, the USB a cards don't fully enter suspend in the os. I have an 11th gen and I pop out my USB a to save battery when I don't need it. The hdmi also used to have that problem but that's since been fixed.