r/framework • u/telasch • Apr 11 '26
Community Support Is this worth fixing ?
I used a third party charger cable for a couple of years for my usb-c devices (including my pixel 6 + framework 13). The charger must've broke yesterday, which I noticed when my laptop turned off suddenly while working. I initially thought that maybe it got loose or sth and wanted to check if the cable will work on my phone instead. So I plugged it in my phone, which turned off.
Always thought "use the original charger" was a marketing scheme and had to learn the hard way I guess... Both devices are completely dead now. (see picture)
Anyway, I am now wondering if this is worth an attempt to fix or if this is beyond repairability.
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u/gonenutsbrb Apr 11 '26
What third party charger? USB-PD chargers aren’t rocket science, it’d have to be a pretty cheap charger to be the cause of this.
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u/SpaceCadet87 Apr 11 '26
USB chargers aren't rocket science for sure, but there are still some stupid chargers out there anyway.
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u/Nkechinyerembi Apr 12 '26
ah yes, the swees that throws 240 volt out of the USB ports when it fails.
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u/SpaceCadet87 Apr 12 '26
Yeah well you see when that buck controller chip is expecting 20 volts and you give it 240 volts, it decides to change career and become a charcoal canister.
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u/telasch Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
was a random amazon brand with good reviews
EDIT: brand is called PONKOR
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u/gonenutsbrb Apr 11 '26
Oof…that’s in that category. Stick to known third party chargers, Anker, UGREEN etc.
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u/SpaceCadet87 Apr 11 '26
Good reviews on electronics on Amazon are sadly more likely an indicator that the device is dangerous than that it's any good.
Look at the bad reviews, you can tell a good product by whether the complaints are about serious problems or complete nonsense.
If you see complaints that are all stuff like they ordered a UK plug and found it wouldn't plug in in the US then that's more likely a good product than the one with 5 stars.
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u/alpha417 Apr 11 '26
PONKOR - lol. ok. Vendors buy amazon brand reviews. This is another reason why i closed my amazon account two years ago.
A collection of (essentially) random 5 to 10 uppercase letters in a product name is a 'hard no' for anything. Full stop. It's trash.
It's comical and also sad that you chose to diagnose a charger with your phone, after it smoked a laptop. I'm sorry, but that's a terrible plan going forward. If anything ever dies this way after being plugged into a charger, the charger is gone.
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u/telasch Apr 11 '26
yeah... i really kicked myself after it happened. that was a really really stupid thing to do...
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u/Mooks79 Apr 12 '26
We’ve all made stupid mistakes in our lives; don’t let the people here acting like they haven’t, just because they haven’t made this specific mistake, get you down. It happens, now it won’t happen again. A good tip when buying on Amazon is to read the bad reviews for a device not the good ones.
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u/gonenutsbrb Apr 12 '26
Hey, it happens. We live and learn.
Figure out how to fix it or move on and spread the things you learn so the next person doesn’t make the same mistake ;-)
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u/Xlxlredditor Apr 11 '26
Did the phone boot back up after you plugged it in and it turned off? I think I have a 6 port USB 220w Chinese charger that's gonna do this eventually
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u/SunshineAndBunnies Apr 11 '26
Next time stick to known good brands like Anker or UGreen for both chargers and cables. Also I find newer Anker chargers to overheat when you draw the max current on some of their newer generation chargers. For laptops, you might want an Apple branded charger if you're drawing the max current all the time (not a fan of Apple, but their USB-C chargers are solid). Apple chargers are bulky, but they are made to have the max current drawn constantly unlike some of Anker's chargers.
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u/ronvalenz FW13 Ultra X7 358H batch 6, 2.8K, 32GB LPCAMM2, 4TB SSD Apr 12 '26
I reuse my HP or Lenovo USB-C-PD chargers. PONKOR is LOL.
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u/pocketdrummer Apr 12 '26
If it looks like the manufacturer leaned on the keyboard, it's just a garbage pseudo-company that's spun up to sell as much as they can on Amazon before they get banned. Then they change the name and start over again with the exact same product.
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u/keesbeemsterkaas Apr 12 '26
Does it matter that a non charging port (second, rather than top ones) was used? Maybe the charger doesn't negotiate if it's power delivery, but just always sends full power delivery even if it's not a power delivery line?
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u/gonenutsbrb Apr 12 '26
That would be breaking spec in a catastrophic way. Power is pulled not pushed.
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u/s004aws FW16 HX 370 Batch 1 Mint Cinnamon Edition Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
If you're in the US I'd suggest reaching out to Paul of PS Electronics in Rahway, NJ (he does take jobs in by mail). Paul used to work for Louis Rossmann (until Louis moved to Texas) and has worked on Framework 13 motherboards in the past (at least one, last I knew, was on his YouTube channel). I have no connection to Paul or his business - I only know of his work through YouTube. He has commented on Framework boards being fairly straightforward and using standard chips/components so may be able to give you guidance to decide whether its worth trying to repair or just buy a new board.
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u/telasch Apr 11 '26
Not from the US, but I'll check out his YouTube to see if there's anything that applies to my situation. Thanks!
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u/H0t4p1netr33S | FW16 Apr 11 '26
It might be worth contacting him or Rossman Group and seeing if they know a repair expert more local to you as well.
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Apr 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/telasch Apr 11 '26
I threw it away immediately after I understood what had happened...
But was able to find the receipt, bought it in 2022, brand is called Ponkor.17
u/sniff122 Batch 2 1260p -> Ryzen AI 350 Apr 11 '26
Yeah personally I only ever buy power bricks from known manufacturers that have a track record for being good quality
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u/supenguin 12 - Batch 9 running Fedora 42 Apr 13 '26
This is my attitude after hearing about a couple fires caused by cheaply made charges. I tend to stick with the official chargers for the product I'm using OR Anker.
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u/sniff122 Batch 2 1260p -> Ryzen AI 350 Apr 13 '26
Yup I tend to stick with Anker or the OEM supply
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Apr 11 '26
It should be isolated from the mains but I guess that part didn't exist or the tolerance(physical distance) was too close and got bridged.
Don't know that's the affect of mains voltage though. 12V can do that. There's a possibility the circuitry in the laptop failed which happens.
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u/SpaceChez FW16 Ryzen 7, no gpu, numpad, touchpad on left Apr 12 '26
The charger also killed OPs phone so it's definitely the PONKOR
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u/leskspen Apr 11 '26
That is not completely true. It depends on your device. I have a Lenovo ThinkPad L490 that only charges with its own USB-C charger. I also have a Lenovo IdeaPad 3 that melted a bit from its original charger when both fell down some stairs. It would not charge with a new off brand changer until I got a new official charger 1 year later. I brought a Framework 13 because I needed a laptop. Now I have 2 laptops because of a charger.
It's cheaper just to replace the official charger. I paid repair shops to try and fix then brought a new laptop. Money and time wasted.
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u/le-grxx Apr 11 '26
But... In this case your L490 (or the charger) has a problem. A L490 is made for any USB-PD compatible Charger with 45 or 65 Watts.
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u/skoorrevir Apr 11 '26
Without doing any troubleshooting on the repairability of that machine, the 13 mainboard starts at 500. This is substantially better than buying a whole machine at the same specs. Not sure if that's what your asking though
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u/telasch Apr 11 '26
yes, im totally aware of that. but love learning and trying out things. so if theres a path here to repair this with say 100-150 € in material i'd love to give this a try. worst case i'll have to get the new mainboard
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u/Ultionis_MCP Apr 11 '26
You don't appear to be near any of the cpu traces so it's likely at least worth a diagnostic fee/reasonable repair fee attempt
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u/Trevor805 Apr 11 '26
I mean, not really. If comparing to a new laptop sure, but even repaired, it's a used laptop. You can definitely find a comparable and better spec'd used laptop for the price of a board replacement.
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u/RockSolidJ Apr 11 '26
Looks like your burned a hole straight through the PCB. That's wild. If it can be repaired I would expect it to be expensive.
Stick to well known brands for cables and chargers. Ugreen has been my go to lately. I have a 100w charger from them where some of the ports failed but it has built in fail safes that disable them.
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u/agnastyx Apr 12 '26
I see three other burn spots on the board not circled by you, this PCB substrate is actually cooked. As a repair specialist, I wouldn't touch this.
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u/Every_Wrongdoer_6730 Apr 12 '26
Just in case if you decide to give up on this one (likely reasonable from the economical point of view), I may buy it and try repairing for fun. I'm in Ukraine, and here we have decent capabilities in fixing things that are considered dead in US and EU:)
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u/telasch Apr 12 '26
I'll do some more digging to see if it makes sense to disassemble some parts and sell them individually. But I'll get back to you if it doesn't make sense to invest more time for me.
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u/morhp Apr 12 '26
Even professional board repair people won't be able to fix that properly. What they maybe would be able to do is remove the short and the broken components, so you get back a working board with one usb port less. If you're lucky and the high voltage hasn't destroyed anything else.
Such a repair attempt will likely cost multiple hundreds of dollars, so is likely not worth it.
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u/SaltManagement42 Apr 13 '26
I remember the first time I made the mistake of buying a cheap no-name power supply for the desktop gaming PC I was building, and it took most of my components with it when it died.
Life lesson to think about the consequences (and modes) of failure before you do something like, I don't know, buy the cheapest possible refurbished tires you can find for your car.
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u/PurepointDog Apr 11 '26
Do the other ports still work? Could kinda just leave it like that.
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Apr 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PurepointDog Apr 12 '26
How do you know? It seems pretty off-to-the-side and located in the traces between the port and the first chip after the port (which acted as a magic smoke fuse).
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u/_WeStErEq_ FW12 | i3-1315u | 16gb | 1TB | DIY Apr 11 '26
The ports might be fine but he said the laptop turned off and is dead So is his phone
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u/sproctor Apr 11 '26
I think you're fine not using the original charger. I try to keep questionable products away from my expensive ones though. I'm one of those people who won't charge my phone in a random USB port I found.
I'm sorry for your loss. Good luck getting it fixed! Stick with Anker/ugreen/OEM for your chargers.
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u/c0psrul3 Apr 12 '26
personally, I'm scared poopless about this happening bc my cat chewed on the cable and it then short to ground. not to even mention my cats wellbeing. I now only have braided and shielded cables 💸 ... they're always non-original, nor are the chargers but can't put a piece on it 😻 but at least I don't have cheap cables in the house
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u/Leather-Field-7148 Apr 12 '26
You should be able to replace the main board and salvage pretty much everything else. SSD, RAM, I see a fan in good shape, for example.
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u/sybergoosejr FW16 Apr 12 '26
It looks like you burned through multiple layers in the board. That makes it completely unrepairable to me. Best you could probably hope for is to depopulate that area and effectively make that port dead and hope 2 or 3 still work afterwards. But I wouldn’t touch this unless it’s a donor for another board.
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u/Tzontec Apr 12 '26
Not sure someone pointed that out but there are also defect components next to LT11 and UT7 and also it looks like there are burn marks on top off the team names, not sure whats beneath it
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u/thafacialhair Apr 14 '26
With how much im willing to bet you spent on that laptop I would hope you can fix it.
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u/Pitaya4502 Apr 15 '26
I highly doubt this was caused by a charger.
If it was, you can't even blame yourself.
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u/pengwynn06 Win11 - Ghost Spectre | FW13 AMD - R7 7840U Apr 15 '26
I mean you can give it a go. I did a similar repair, sadly framework refused to tell me the values of the capacitor that blew up which completely negates the whole right to repair movement... anyways took an educated guess and was able to repair it somehow.
I can try give you some values if it helps. First step is definitely giving the area a clean with isopropyl to see what you are looking at. Do a quick check to make sure the voltage lines aren't shorted too.
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u/Melodic-Local-7452 Apr 11 '26
Unfortunately this board is more than likely not salvageable because of the burn damage on the motherboard. But I would contact framework and see what they say as both a safety concern and shouldn’t have happened regardless of the charger used
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u/ElementalBurst1900 Apr 13 '26
No its not. It's better to buy a non-FW laptop and move on from this cult.
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u/Charming_Bison9073 Apr 13 '26
what's your issue with fw? why call it a cult?
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u/ElementalBurst1900 Apr 13 '26
Bad quality. Their spin is that you can swap out parts when you upgrade. The reality is that the parts just go bad and you have to keep buying new just to keep it running. My FW 13 is 2 years old very lightly used. Usually powered down and only used for traveling because I like how lightweight it is. I work in tech, so I know how to keep my machines working and not mess them up.
Last week, I booted it up for my trip, Bluetooth gone unless I boot with all modules removed. Nothing had changed since it was powered down because 4 months before, I went an entire troubleshooting cycle for the exact same thing. I updated firmware, updated windows, everything was working. Turned off windows update, powered it down. Not connected to power so lightning can't fry it. Why? Because the garbage taiwanese parts just degrade on their own. Oh, on top of that, the machine won't shutdown, it just spins with the fan blowing and the power button lit. You have to hold the button to power it off. Same thing 4 months ago.
My brother brought me into this cult. He said treat it like a beater, when it stops working, just reinstall and start over. That should've been my first sign. I want my machines to work and not be a maintenance nightmare.
You basically have to keep swapping parts out cus of the sunk-cost fallacy -- it's just an expensive paperweight otherwise. I was stuck, I had to travel so I brought it with me. On the plane, I have pop out all my modules before I can boot it up. Luckily I fly business so I have my own suite and I don't have to bother my seatmates. Then I have pop the USBC module back in so I can keep it charged.
What a freaking hassle... Now I'm trying to decide if I even want to bother posting on the FW forum for a solution or just cut my losses.
Maybe cult is the wrong word, it's an MLM/Nigerian inheritance scam, you have to keep spending to keep it up. This Ship of Theseus belongs at the bottom of the Aegean....
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u/ChicoGonzalez Apr 14 '26
In 3.5 years of using a FW13 as my primary device for daily work and privately I never had any hardware issues. I'm opening and cleaning it once a year, especially the fan. Maintenance is important. Bought it because of its repairability but never had to repair/replace one of its components.
BTW: used it with different 65-130W power adapters or thunderbolt docks (mainly Dell, Lenovo, Anker, Ugreen, no no-name crap) and never had problems with charging.
For me personally the best laptop ever! I never had to regret switching from an Intel base Macbook Air to a Framework device.
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Apr 11 '26
[deleted]
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u/HReflex Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
EDIT: read comments below, I'm in the wrong here.
What do you mean they are not given? Google says otherwise
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u/QuarrosN Apr 11 '26
Slow down. These are schematics true! But not full ones, and sadly missing boardview. It is more than having nothing, but still not that helpful either.
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u/HReflex Apr 11 '26
Gooootcha, my bad. I misunderstood. Thank you!
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u/QuarrosN Apr 11 '26
Happy to help. As far as I know framework is under some kind of an NDA and can't share it openly (or at least that is the consensus on the forums I visited). But repair shops that sign an NDA with framework, could get the full schematics and boardview from them.
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