The Expansion Bay is a custom slot on the back of Framework Laptop 16.
The expansion bay contains the cooling fans for Framework laptop 16. For this reason, an expansion bay module must be installed whenever the laptop is in use.
By default, Framework Laptop 16 comes with the Expansion Bay Shell, which only includes system cooling in the form of two 75mm x 8.2mm Cooler Master fans. With this module, the width of the laptop is 17.95mm 1.
Users can replace the default Expansion Bay Shell with a dedicated GPU for more graphics-heavy workloads. At the time of writing, the only option is an AMD Radeon RX 7700S, though more options will come. [citation-needed] The AMD Radeon RX 7700S module includes 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, a 100W TGP, and 2 Cooler Master fans — the same as the ones included in the Expansion Bay Shell 2. The module increases the length of the laptop to 290.2mm and increases the thickness to 20.95mm/ 3
The Expansion Bay interface uses a custom connector that includes power and signaling for 8-lane PCIe, DisplayPort input and control for the internal display. 4