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Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC
- pitaj 2y agohttps://frame.work/ https://frame.work/ > Your estimated wait time is 1 hour and 3 minutes. Ouch
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- mariusor 2y agoBack to the internet of the nineties. But even then there wasn't a queue to "view" a website.
- favorited 2y agoIt's actually a pretty nice system when you're trying to purchase something. You have a reasonable estimate of when you'll be at the front of the queue, and when that time comes, you're more likely to be able to complete your transaction because the site isn't overwhelmed. It would obviously be better if they could limit it to something like `store.frame.work`, rather than putting a queue in front of their entire site…
- mariusor 2y agoYeah, for the shop it makes total sense, but for the front-page not so much.
- 9dev 2y agoThis makes zero sense, absolutely ever. Magento was able to properly cache the view-only parts like 15 years ago. No matter the traffic spikes, serving read requests shouldn’t require hour-long waiting times for visitors.
- mariusor 2y agoWhen money is involved and customers want to make payments to a limited resource (which the release batches are) I think being extra careful is quite important.
- whatever1 2y agoCan we also have a desktop keyboard trackpad combo?
- shaw00000 2y agoI was really hoping for an ARM laptop. Hopefully they'll develop one soon.
- coldpie 2y agoYou can get, uhhhh, RISC-V. We have ARM at home? https://frame.work/products/deep-computing-risc-v-mainboard https://frame.work/products/deep-computing-risc-v-mainboard
- delfinom 2y agoRISCV is garbage for real use currently. Arm laptops are plenty competitive with the x86 space with the snapdragons now.
- nobankai 2y agoRISC-V chips tend to be slower, but architecture-wise there's not much an ARM chip can do that a RISC-V one can't. Both are pretty well-supported for the coding/web browsing use case laptops get employed for.
- jsheard 2y agoIsn't the Snapdragon X Elite pretty much the only part that would fit the bill? Framework might not even be able to get those, Qualcomm generally won't even give you the time of day unless you commit to buying a bazillion units.
- 6SixTy 2y agoYes but Framework doesn't have to and probably doesn't want to. Snapdragon laptops often ship with very few user serviceable parts including RAM which would be tough for the Framework mold IMO even if they got something working with LPCAMM (though that's likely an inevitability). But Qualcomm making a Framework compatible board in part as development kits would likely be beneficial for both.
- calvinmorrison 2y agowhat is the pitch, because desktops don't have a problem with replacements, repairs etc.
- sunshowers 2y ago256 GB/s memory bandwidth for $2000.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoWhich should also be available from all the usual motherboard manufacturers. Possibly well before this one, since it doesn't ship until Q3.
- sunshowers 2y agoWill it? I'm not aware of any other than the HP workstation. Maybe one or two of the Chinese mini PC manufacturers. But nothing you can buy as a mini-ITX motherboard.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoOf course you will. Asus et al have heard the buzz, have the connections, and can spin up a product far quicker than the 5-9 or months before Strix Halo is available.
- sunshowers 2y agoSure, to the extent that happens, the Framework will compete with them. Competition is great.
- zamalek 2y agoIt's soldered RAM, which is a fantastic trade-off for specific scenarios (inference). If all you care about is local inference, this thing is basically the same price as a 5090 (I think?) with multiple times the memory, and no need to purchase "everything else" (mobo, CPU, etc.) alongside. And given that home inference will typically be serving a single user at once, a handful at worst, you really have no need for a GPU. I'm guessing that this product will be uniquely positioned for quite a long time. For every other use-case? Yeah, just get a desktop.
- IlikeKitties 2y agoFramework is REALLY pushing the envelope here. /r/localLLaMA is waiting deperatly for Strix Halo.
- JohnDeHope 2y agoI hate to be a hater, but having built myriad gaming PCs in my time, this doesn't really seem like much of a step forward. I'm hoping it's just the beginning. I'd love a modular plug-and-play PC parts ecosystem. This doesn't seem like that, yet.
- Nifty3929 2y agoImagine being able to swap components between their laptops and desktops! That would be pretty cool. Not sure how practically useful, but cool nonetheless.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoYou can do that with https://www.coolermaster.com/en-global/products/framework/ https://www.coolermaster.com/en-global/products/framework/ This announcement is bog standard mini-ITX.
- mariusor 2y agoWhich is developed together with which company? Could you guess?
- usrusr 2y agoTechnically, those tiny USB-to-whatever blocks of their laptops can be considered components and you can supposedly swap them with the desktop: > (note the two bays for Framework's expansion cards at the bottom)
- evantbyrne 2y agoThe framework website currently has a strange message about putting users into queues just to view the homepage. Might be time to start thinking about setting up Varnish
- ortusdux 2y agoIt looks like their event drove a lot of traffic towards frame.work - Cloudfare is giving me a 1hr 9min wait to access the site. https://i.imgur.com/twcxJjr.png https://i.imgur.com/twcxJjr.png
- christophilus 2y agoSame. This is the first time I’ve ever seen the Cloudflare queue screen.
- buckle8017 2y agoIsn't the entire purpose of a CDN like cloudflare to enable bursts like that?
- 0x457 2y agoCF can only handle static websites, I suspect the issue the store-backend side not being able to catch up.
- fragmede 2y agoI should still be able to click around the pages to browse the products, even if full cart functionality isn't there. Whoever is in charge of that website gets an L. For that matter, it makes me reconsider my hosting of things with Cloudflare. I know nothing about framework's site's configuration, but I know I don't want my site to have a waiting line like that. edit: also, the timer went down and then went back up, so I have thoughts about this enterprise Cloudflare feature.
- onli 2y agoFramework is great because they took an entshittified category and made a good and repairable product in it, upgradeable in a way the other vendors refused to enable. That was the laptop. Now they made a less repairable desktop PC. This brings nothing to the market. The soldered ram is particularly unacceptable. I get and believe that they could not make it work otherwise, but then they should have stopped the product instead of just adding to the e-waste.
- sunshowers 2y agoThere's no other way to get 256 GB/s of memory bandwidth for this cheap, and that's quite valuable in many workloads. I'm curious to get one for compiling code too. You can get similar bandwidth with server boards that cost 5-10x as much, or with a Mac Studio that costs 2.5x as much.
- i80and 2y agoNote that this is what CAMM[1] memory is intended to solve, although it remains to be seen to what extent it catches on. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAMM_(memory_module) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAMM_(memory_module)
- pitaj 2y agoAccording to Framework, CAMM / LPCAMM is simply not compatible with this line of AMD chips, do to signal integrity reasons.
- aseipp 2y agoCAMM will be fine on laptops and other smaller form factor devices for CPU-class memory speeds, but it does not have the bus width or lanes to match solutions like Strix Halo, Grace, Apple M-series -- the memory bandwidth being a large part of their appeal. Increasing the bus width on CAMM modules is going to compromise many of the other advantages. The problem is that these are integrated shared-memory systems with a single RAM pool. That's nice for a lot of reasons, but GPUs need many more memory channels and larger bus widths than CPUs do in order to do work and remain fed at a reasonable power draw. It's an inherent design trade off. I don't see a CAMM style solution for GPU memory coming anytime soon except on the low end.
- Kim_Bruning 2y agoUp to 128 GB RAM available for running AI models. Theoretically awesome, but this might have some interesting market consequences for everyone else.
- dragonwriter 2y ago$2,0000 to $3,000 desktop devices with 128GB of shared GPU/CPU RAM seems to be a segment that is seeing lots of announcements from lots of vendors.
- alwayslikethis 2y agoThe bandwidth still doesn't quite compare to a GPU, and 128GB doesn't fit DeepSeek R1, however. If they bump it to 512GB for $5000 or so, that will disrupt the market.
- ricardobeat 2y ago256GB/s is on par with the M4 Pro at a much lower price. You could run R1 671B using unsloth’s quantized version that fits in <80GB. Not sure why that would be a benchmark though, there’s nothing that can run the model at full precision right now except for (very slow) server hardware.
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- ant6n 2y agoBut you can use an AMD EPYC cpu and get 460GB/s bandwidth. Could probably get 512GB RAM for a lot cheaper than 5K.
- josephg 2y agoYou’ve gotta deal with amd’s AI software stack though. How is that these days? I assume cuda is still king?
- rglullis 2y agoI've been running ollama on an XTX7900 (AMD GPU with 24GB of RAM) with any model that fits in it, and absolutely no issues there.
- coldpie 2y agoTwo other Framework announcements: New 12-inch laptop form factor with 360 degree hinge (ie "tablet mode") and a touchscreen. No price announced, but it is aimed at students: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/frameworks-laptop-12-is-its-first-stab-at-a-budget-convertible-touchscreen-pc/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/frameworks-laptop-12... New mainboard upgrade options for Framework 13 models: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/framework-gives-its-13-inch-laptop-another-boost-with-ryzen-ai-300-cpu-update/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/framework-gives-its-...
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoReserved one of the updated base model 13’s. Battery life for this gen of Ryzen seems solid in other laptops so I’m hoping it’ll do reasonably well at stretching the FW13’s 61Wh battery for low intensity tasks, particularly in power save mode under Linux.
- yonatan8070 2y agoI really want to get a Framework to replace my aging IdeaPad, but they don't ship to my region yet. I was planning on ordering the 7840U version to where I'm staying in a trip to the US, but now it feels a bit of a let down to order a last-gen model since the new one might not arrive in time for my trip in mid-April.
- tomnipotent 2y agoHave you considered looking into a personal freight forwarder? I used these a few times while traveling through Europe.
- mistercheph 2y agoBe careful with this because framework will not warranty your product in any way, and given their size and age, there is a not insignificant chance you will experience a product defect or failure and have no recourse, love my framework but I experienced a mainboard bricking after a failed firmware update, which framework addressed under warranty. I would caution against buying without a warranty.
- ThinkBeat 2y agoIt seems unframeworky Memory, CPU and GPU once piece of metal, sitting in a tiny box. A regular PC in a regular case, it a lot more modular and upgradable. It does seem like an interesting box, and matches against Apple Studio I would presume. Yet customers of Apple are used to having (near) 0 user modifiable parts. It might well have a good market, It might b a great box. It is unframeworky.
- unethical_ban 2y agoThere is a balance between forgetting your purpose and thinking too narrowly about your business. At first, Framework is "laptops that are repairable". But if you broaden what they are, they are a disruptor of direct-to-consumer computing equipment, with a core competency of repairability and upgradability. An integrated CPU/RAM is a decrease in that measure, but it is for a valid benefit - a large improvement in performance for low-power graphics and AI software. They aren't sacrificing upgradability for aesthetic, and they continue to offer fully upgradable laptops. I wonder if modular memory will continue to evolve and be competitive bandwidth wise with soldered.
- jsheard 2y ago> I wonder if modular memory will continue to evolve and be competitive bandwidth wise with soldered. That's the promise of CAMM2, which is supposed to enable socketed LPDDR with almost the same performance as soldered-down LPDDR. It's still pretty bleeding-edge though so it's hard to blame Framework for sticking with soldered memory for now.
- throwaway48476 2y agoIt's on package memory that AMD sells bundled to OEMs.
- ac29 2y agoStrix Halo doesn't have on package memory, are you thinking of Intel's Lunar Lake?
- shaw00000 2y agoI was really look forward to an ARM laptop. Hopefully they will develop one soon.
- wmf 2y agoThey should wait for Snapdragon X2 and Nvidia "N1".
- ozaiworld 2y agoSoldered memory and no x16 PCIe slot on a desktop are interesting choices. Not sure who the target market is. Seems like the interconnect between boards is also pretty slow compared to Nvidia Digits or even thunderbolt 5.
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- throwaway48476 2y agoLaptop chips often only have x8.
- ThatPlayer 2y agoLooks like the Ryzen AI Max chips do have x16: https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen/ai-300-series/amd-ryzen-ai-max-plus-395.html https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen/ai-3... But you probably want M.2 slots over a single x16 slot.
- anticensor 2y agoThey could have added a 16 lane upstream, 32 lane downstream PLX switch to packet switch between those devices.
- throwaway48476 2y agoPLX switches are too expensive for a consumer device. There's not enough competition in the PCIe switch market.
- preisschild 2y agoProbably geared towards being a LLM workstation in a small format, similar to a Mac Studio.
- sliken 2y agoIt's got a rtx 4070 laptop chip equivalent on chip, so most are not going to need more GPU or anything else that needs a x16 PCIe. Looks pretty nice for a small PC that's quiet, energy efficient, and don't flinch if you try to run something 3D intensive.
- harrison_clarke 2y agowould have been cool to know about this a month ago i just built a mini ITX gaming PC for a friend, and this one looks pretty good for quality/$. good enough that i wouldn't be surprised if these get snapped up and re-sold for more than the sticker price i think it makes more sense to think of it as a high-end console, given that basically everything is soldered, though
- dangus 2y agoThis is a terrible gaming PC. It’s really meant for running LLMs, the main benefit is the large amount of unified graphics memory, which is not relevant to gaming. For one thing, the price per FPS for gaming is going to be terrible. This price can get you a serious rig with much better performance. Gaming is a very specific workload that almost entirely depends on the GPU. It is hard to even purchase a CPU that performs poorly in gaming by accident, or unless you are a hyper-specific type of gamer (like someone who plays e-sports titles and expects 300FPS for optimal reaction time, or someone who plays extremely CPU-intense games like Stellaris). You don’t want a gaming PC with soldered GPU, even if you are using it as a “console,” even if you prioritize small size. You really want the ability to replace graphics cards because none of the other components important to gaming age out very quickly. Here are all of the parts in my system that are older than my current graphics card (2024): - Motherboard - CPU - RAM - Power Supply - SSD - Case - CPU cooler Here is a list of those parts that are older than my previous graphics card (2020) - RAM - Case - Power Supply - Motherboard - SSD Here is a list of all the components that are older than the prior graphics cards before that! (Year unknown) - Motherboard - RAM - Power Supply Arguably I didn’t even need to upgrade the CPU, the cooler upgrade was necessitated by the CPU upgrade, and the case upgrade and SSD were both just personal wants and not needs. Basically everything that matters besides my graphics card has stayed very constant but upgrading the GPU has increased my gaming performance by over 100% in the period I have described.
- harrison_clarke 2y agoa quick search told me that this thing's GPU (8060s) is comparable to a 4070 from what i can tell, a 4070 alone is ~$750. this thing is apparently $799 for the CPU+GPU+RAM+motherboard all soldered together ($300 more for case+PSU+SSD) if the CPU+RAM+motherboard are costing me $50, i don't really care if i have to throw them out along with the GPU
- 9283409232 2y agoIt's always interesting watching different segments people react to a product announcement. When Intel announced their new GPUs, AI people talked about how lame it is and they should've put my VRAM while gaming people talked about what a steal it is.
- samtheprogram 2y agoWait, so I’d have to use ROCm for compute? That sucks. I’ve had better luck with Intel’s drivers for their first series of dGPU’s. If this works with tinygrad’s AMD driver, that would then interest me.
- toast0 2y agoThe i740 did have some nice drivers....
- h14h 2y agoMy hope is that the popularity of this hardware creates pressure to improve ROCm software support. Me & my 7900 XTX will be quite grateful if it does.
- samtheprogram 2y agoSame, would love that. TinyGrad’s driver would be pretty awful to use if it would even work since I think it would prevent using the GPU simultaneously, though I may be wrong there. Otherwise as it stands the 128 GB configuration seems pretty niche. EDIT: looking deeper it seems like the "Ryzen AI" is it's own thing with a different implementation than ROCm, so it could be interesting but might not help with ROCm.
- Etheryte 2y agoOne interesting angle here could be if this had good compatibility with SteamOS to the point where it supported most/all the games the Steam Deck does. That would make it a very appealing offering, since right now DIY SteamOS setups are a pretty wild west.
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- TingPing 2y agoEven if not official, it is perfect hardware for SteamOS and probably works out of the box.
- 999900000999 2y agoAs is you can buy a decent AMD mini PC for about $500 and just install Linux on it. It works very well for the most part, and a few distros offer steam OS like experiences. For my mini PC I couldn't get the EGPU to work with Linux so I'm stuck on Windows for now... But I play a few games that are Windows only ( anti cheat) so this is for the best.
- kibwen 2y agoIdeally what you'd be paying for is Valve's first-party partnership, and therefore a commitment to tailor Proton development to specifically ensure that this hardware keeps working (at least as well as a Steam Deck works, anyway). I believe this is what Valve has done for the Lenovo Legion Go S.
- nobankai 2y agoThat is ideal, but also pretty unnecessary. The only thing AMD has to support on their end is Vulkan, and the work on that front is effectively finished. What Valve can offer is HID support for handheld hardware and potentially shader caching servers for huge swaths of identical hardware models. With a desktop there's a limit to what Valve can commit to. There's not a single controller firmware to support, and probably not even a consistent GPU setup to cache for. The extent of realistic support for these AMD boards is kinda fully realized at this point. Proton is, and will remain, a plug-and-play experience for AMD users that own supported hardware.
- mywittyname 2y agoWhy this over a traditional ATX work station? The article even points out the motherboard will fit in an ATX case, so size doesn't seem to be the major selling point. For gaming specifically, so many micro ATX motherboards offer Gen 5 PCIe, which can handle a proper video card, double the RAM, and the smaller cases are only slightly larger than this Framework.
- jsheard 2y agoThe main selling point is the unified memory, the GPU isn't as fast as a discrete GPU but it can address quadruple the RAM of the biggest consumer dGPU. It'll be good for inference if the software stack works.
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoIs the audience truly gamers? Presumed this was just poor journalism from ars
- arp242 2y agoIt's billed as "Massive gaming capability, heavy-duty AI compute, and standard PC parts, all in 4.5L." on the Framework website. And then further below it has "All the power to play all the games." And it has a dedicated "Gaming" tab with benchmarks and stuff. So I'd say yes.
- currymj 2y agotheir marketing photos include 1) a game controller next to the PC, 2) a bottle of Bawls soda next to the PC, so I think so.
- cosmic_cheese 2y agoI could see myself going for something like this for gaming actually. My gaming needs are pretty tame to the point that my current 3080Ti has been and remains overkill (usually 2+ year old titles @ 2560x1440), and as time has gone on I’ve come to value silence (which the FW Desktop seems good at, overcooling a laptop APU with a single fan desktop cooler) over raw power. In addition, the discrete GPU story continues to escalate to all-new levels of eye-wateringly expensive stupidity which makes me not want to buy any discrete GPU until Nvidia and AMD bring their prices back down to earth and that whole mess with the new Nvidia power connector is properly resolved, and that’s to say nothing about the unstoppable creep of GPU size, heat, and power consumption. If I could sell my full size gaming tower and replace it with an effortlessly inaudible yet reasonably powerful air cooled SFF box, I might just do it. In all truth I could probably get by fine with this first gen Framework desktop, but it would make more sense to wait for a second or third gen where the APU's graphical power comes into the range of upper-tier RTX 3000 cards so I don’t need to use framegen as a crutch for decent framerates.
- wewewedxfgdf 2y agoNvidia must be extremely nervous about this - the most direct threat to the RTX4090. But hey, they've refused to provide GPUs with lots of RAM at a cheap price so competition, y'all.
- jsheard 2y agoThis isn't really in the same category as the 4090/5090, it has a lot more memory but with a fraction of the bandwidth. 128GB at 256GB/sec vs 32GB at nearly 2TB/sec. Nvidia's actual counterpart would be their DIGITS mini-PC, which has a similar big-and-slow memory architecture.
- wewewedxfgdf 2y agoAMD claims this APU delivers more than twice the tokens per second than an RTX4090. So its better than 4090. The reason its better with a less powerful GPU is context switching. "AMD also claims its Strix Halo APUs can deliver 2.2x more tokens per second than the RTX 4090 when running the Llama 70B LLM (Large Language Model) at 1/6th the TDP (75W)." https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-slides-claim-strix-halo-can-beat-the-rtx-4070-laptop-gpu-by-up-to-68-percent-in-modern-games https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-slides-c...
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- farawayea 2y agoThis is a cool product for people who want a lot of RAM for LLMs. Those like me who build their own systems would get better value out of a machine they've built. The only parts which can be customized for this product are the presence or absence of a handle, the cooler's fan, the case's side and some front tiles. That's it. The m.2 SSD and the wifi are the only components which can be replaced. This isn't the kind of product I wanted Framework to make. I was hoping they'd make hardware which can be repaired and which has components available for it. The motherboard has all the chips and everything else soldered on it. The most expensive part of the computer needs to be replaced if a voltage regulator or some other part found on the motherboard fails. There's no cheap $ 100-200 motherboard to replace in this product. It's the same problem as with Apple's Macs. Can someone at Framework answer this question: what do the customers do with your Framework Desktop hardware once it breaks and you no longer support it? It's e-waste. What happens when the motherboard in my computer dies? I buy only a replacement motherboard while keeping the RAM, the CPU and GPU, unlike for Framework Desktop. What happens when the GPU I have is no longer useful or supported? I buy only a new GPU. This board doesn't even have PCI-E for a GPU. This product is only good as long as the iGPU provides the required performance for whatever application is of interest. This is a weakness the Framework 13 motherboard shares. There's no way to remove the board from its case to use it with a PCI-E x16 GPU with the right PSU. AMD is known to abandon their customers once they release newer dGPUs and SoCs with iGPUs. This can be easily observed if you review the countless reports for crashes with amdgpu on Linux. The amdgpu driver has various bugs which lead to crashes of the GPU or of the entire machine. They're also not good at shipping CPU microcode for consumer CPUs to address hardware bugs and CVEs. As a side note, even the Framework AI HX laptops are extremely expensive for what they offer in terms of hardware. A laptop which goes above $ 2000 without RAM, an SSD, a charger and without any adapters for those bays seems to be a good deal? That's absurd. There are laptops with 32 GB of RAM, the same CPU, better displays, a 1 TB SSD, a charger and all the required ports present on the laptop for less than $ 2000 (including taxes). I hope someone from Framework reads this. I want repairable products which can be upgraded without replacing a monolithic part which is the entire computer. Other noteworthy things - their site went down hard with a queue to see the site... downright absurd - they haven't posted the specs of the Framework 12 - there are still no actual repair centers which repair their products, no physical stores or sellers which sell Framework products outside of their site - there have been reports of people who didn't have their hardware problems with Framework laptops addressed, even LTT addressed such issues
- throwaway48476 2y agoAnnoyingly they don't disclose that the Zen 5 ryzen chips are a mix of Zen 5 and Zen 5c low cache density optimized cores.
- sunshowers 2y agoI think Strix Halo doesn't have any Zen 5c.
- throwaway48476 2y agoThe framework 13 laptop chips have Zen 5c cores.
- TiredOfLife 2y agoAnd that is relevant to the Framework desktop how exactly?
- wmf 2y agoAll laptops are using hybrid P and E cores now. That's just how it works.
- starkparker 2y agoI'm still outright begging Framework to get better at supporting the products that it's already shipping (and to also just... _actually ship them_ to more places). Get more third parties manufacturing compatible components and expansions that are compatible across those products in order to fulfill the stated goal of solving the industry's extensible and modular hardware deserts that exist outside of the lowest-end SBC and higher-end desktop PC markets. Get there before Dell starts doing it, because they've started sniffing around this market segment, and if Framework's not able to scale up if/when Dell enters then it's gonna be over fast. Most of the manufactured Framework-compatible accessories are skins, wraps, and expansion card organizers. Cooler Master dropped one mainboard case and seemingly bounced from the laptop project altogether. There are a bunch of cool DIY projects, a handful of which have been productized, all of them niche. The community marketplace concept never materialized. The extensibility promise of the 16's input modules haven't materialized. The only third-party 13 mainboard that exists after 3.5 years is a cool but ultimately impractical RISC dev board/proof-of-concept; the idea that the Framework mainboard would become a laptop equivalent to the ITX/ATX standards in desktops just did not happen, and Framework's decision to start shipping a bunch of different mainboard formats means it never will. It's particularly depressing to me that the only modular component that seems to be compatible across the 12, 13, 16, and Desktop seems to be the expansion cards, which are a fun concept but at the end of the day are just a form factor for USB-C port adapters. I'm honestly excited about the 12 being a supposedly cheaper repairable option, although seeing this weird Desktop ready to go before the 12 is a boggling decision. I have no interest in spending $1k-$2k+ for a novel mini-PC using laptop components, in a mostly plastic case, with a bespoke motherboard crammed with soldered-on bespoke parts (even for good reasons!) that are designed to _not_ be repaired or replaced. (By the way, why _doesn't_ the desktop use the Framework mainboard form factor? I'd be interested in a genuinely larger mainboard-compatible desktop case with more airflow, designed for a specialty Desktop mainboard but compatible with the laptop mainboards too. A mini-ITX board that's less modular than a commodity mini-ITX board, in a mini-ITX case that isn't competitive with commodity mini-ITX cases, is such a weird choice in Framework's "keep using your mainboards" pitch. If they're going to ship a bespoke board with little to no added value when installed outside of their own case, why doesn't that board use _their own board format_?) Hell, Cooler Master's MasterFrame line is a better execution of what I'd expect and want out of Framework shipping an *TX-compatible desktop case than Framework's case looks to be, and Cooler Master apparently worked on Framework's case too!) And even then, the 12 is just another set of components that aren't cross-compatible with the 13. If they were selling a convertible 13 case, or even just a stylus/touchscreen display for the 13, I'd be buying it right now. Even the 13's new AMD boards aren't exciting because I expect them to ship with the same or worse firmware and driver stability or compatibility issues that still haven't been solved on the 7040-series 13 mainboards a year after shipping them, not because Framework is a terrible company but because their support from AMD has apparently been a nightmare. I finally have my 13 stable and expect a new generation of AMD mainboard to just chuck it back into firmware hell. That Framework keeps taking VC money just to design and ship new laptop lines when their existing lines aren't stable, _and_ ship a less-modular, less-repairable novelty in the Desktop that they try to pitch as a gaming machine—when their laptop fundamentals are still admittedly shaky, and the gaming market still doesn't seem to care for or about them very much at all—just keeps eroding the confidence that this is going to work out in the end.
- kibwen 2y agoIs integrated/non-upgradeable RAM the unavoidable future for all consumer-grade devices? Is there any sort of standard on the horizon that would enable the massive memory bandwidth to compete against the M1-style approach?
- skyyler 2y agoLPCAMM2 memory is the answer, isn't it? It's just not catching on, because of course it isn't. Manufacturers have no incentive to let you upgrade parts on your own.
- Manabu-eo 2y agoFramework entire brand is to let you upgrade parts on your own, and they said CAMM was technically impossible because signal integrity.
- skyyler 2y agoThat sounds like an excuse.
- aseipp 2y agoYou've never been able to upgrade RAM on GPUs for the exact same reasons that Framework is alluding to. That's what's happening here; GPUs have lots of cores, and to keep them feed you need lots of bandwidth to go along with it. All dedicated GPUs come with dedicated memory for this exact reason. Things like traditional "iGPUs" that use DDR can get away with it exactly because they are so small and computationally weak that the limited bandwidth isn't the immediate #1 bottleneck. But Strix Halo is not intended to be a measly iGPU system, so it has different needs. There just isn't a free lunch here, it's an inherent design tradeoff for these kinds of chips. The CPU is just along for the ride, in this case.
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- biomcgary 2y agoCurrently, I'm using generative AI of various kinds on my M1 Air (llm, image gen, TTS, STT), but am frustrated by the limitations - primarily memory and secondarily availability of an MLX adaptation. Just an AI hobbyist, so I don't have time or inclination to tweak everything. Given the non-NVIDIA GPU, how painful will it be to play around with new AI models on this system?
- pimeys 2y agoI run all the AI models without any issues with a desktop Radeon. I don't even think about it, just start the ollama docker and run the models. Inference is not an issue with AMD.
- spacemanspiff01 2y agoAnyone know the tokens/sec for llm inference?
- GuB-42 2y agoIt is a weird product for the Framework brand. The pitch for the Framework laptop is that it is repairable/upgradable/modular. Something that is uncommon for laptops nowadays. This is the opposite. Desktops are modular by default, so much is that my computer is like the Ship of Theseus, I never changed it, but upgrade to upgrade, it is a completely different machine than it once was (it started off as a 486!). This one is not. The Framework desktop doesn't look bad, but now, I am confused about the meaning of the brand. It is as if Tesla made a diesel car.
- te-x 2y agoIt's still a modular computer, just not a laptop. It's more like if Tesla made an electric scooter
- abound 2y agoThe soldered RAM is surprising for Framework, and doubly surprising for being so in a form-factor that usually doesn't have soldered RAM. Similar to what other commenters have expressed, it just seems like they shouldn't have built this product if they couldn't figure out the soldered RAM bit.
- piskov 2y agoThey went for local LLM route and for that high-bandwidth memory is a must. Consider it a low-price alternative to mac mini or nvidia’s box. This can also be chained though not as effectively as macs for example (those have thunderbolt for interconnect)
- awiesenhofer 2y ago> low-price alternative to mac mini This starts at 1099$ per the article, so the mac mini is the low-price alternative here.
- MindSpunk 2y ago
- nrp 2y agoI’m happy to answer questions folks have on the Framework Desktop (though probably not until later today).
- xeonmc 2y agoHow is the planning progress on a trackpoint module?
- fsflover 2y agoCan it run Qubes OS?
- anticensor 2y agoWhy not? This is a fully capable x86 desktop.
- fsflover 2y agoQubes OS doesn't run on any "fully capable x86 desktop". It's based on Xen and hardware virtualization. There are very few desktop computers recommended to run Qubes [0]. Does Framework support suspend on Qubes? If it works, it could become popular in the Qubes Community. [0] https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/community-recommended-computers/5560 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/community-recommended-computers...
- lastgeniusua 2y agoI know a core developer (Marek) recently got a Framework 16 and submitted some fixes after early testing iirc - might be worthwhile chasing it with him
- fsflover 2y agoFramework 16 has already been tested by the Community: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/framework-laptop-16-amd-ryzen-7040-series/24985 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/framework-laptop-16-amd-ryzen-7... I was asking about the desktop.
- yellowapple 2y agoI like the case. Nice and compact, and the swappable tiles are cute. If the case works well with non-Framework Mini-ITX motherboards I'd be tempted to pick one up. The innards, however, are disappointing: - I get the explanation for why soldered RAM was necessary, but that's still pretty darn close to a dealbreaker for me; I'm inclined to wait for a future motherboard revision without that limitation - Only two Expansion Cards is vastly fewer than what I'd expect from a "Framework Desktop" - The lack of a dGPU is unfortunate for a desktop If I were to design a Framework Desktop, I'd replace the entire rear panel with nothing but Expansion Card slots. Literally as many as will fit; fucking fill it to the goddamn brim. And then throw in some USB4 headers to connect to even more Expansion Card slots on the front. I want a terrifyingly large number of Expansion Cards. More Type-C ports than any computer has any business having, and then even more. I don't just want people questioning my sanity; I want it to be known, plain as day, that I have gone certifiably batfuck insane. I'd also expose the same Expansion Bay interface as the Framework 16, and offer a desktop-grade GPU in that form factor (presumably too thick and power-hungry for a laptop, but if a Framework 16 owner wants a laptop with a dummy thicc dumptruck of an ass and 30 minutes of battery life, then who am I to judge?). And air-cooling? So 20th Century! Good opportunity as any to make liquid cooling a mainstream option.
- mixmastamyk 2y agoArticle says there are six ports on the back, in which case you won't need expansion cards back there, as they'd be less space efficient.
- yellowapple 2y agoThe whole point of the expansion card system is to be able to choose which six ports. For all anyone knows I might need six USB Type-A, or two Ethernet and four storage, or a bunch of HDMI or DisplayPort, or what have you; yes, some of these are going to be limited by what the chipset can pump out, but still. That sort of modularity and swappability is something I leverage daily with both of my Framework laptops; that's indeed half the point of a Framework. And as for the space-efficiency... the existing non-swappable ports are already pretty sparse and spread out. The expansion cards ain't all that big; stacking a bunch of 'em shouldn't take up more space.
- r2vcap 2y agoFramework’s current policy in Asia—limiting deliveries solely to Taiwan—warrants reconsideration. Due to these restrictions, I had no choice but to purchase Apple products instead. To prevent further customer dissatisfaction, Framework should re-evaluate its shipping policies. I understand that Framework’s logistics cannot match those of major retailers like Amazon or AliExpress. However, many customers rely on freight forwarders to access products from other countries. It is deeply disappointing that Framework does not allow shipments to these intermediaries, as they are a common and well-established workaround for limited international shipping. Given the widespread use of such services, excluding them seems unjustified.
- 42772827 2y agoThis is to comply with the ever changing export restrictions enacted by the current US administration. So don’t expect it to change soon.
- yellow_lead 2y agoThat sounds misleading. The parent comment says all deliveries in Asia are limited to Taiwan. As far as I'm aware, export restrictions are only placed on certain chips going to China. How do export restrictions prevent Framework from shipping to i.e Japan?
- 42772827 2y agoNothing about the current regime projects stability. Taiwan is a strategic partner and the source of many parts, so it’s essentially the only “safe bet” in Asia. When you’re a company who needs time to adapt to any change in policy (aka all of them) and a company that can’t afford fines for noncompliance (small companies like Framework) your strategy is to be as conservative as possible.
- komali2 2y agoWell, they also manufacture in Taiwan. Their office was around the corner from my restaurant here, and their staff would come in frequently. When I pre-ordered a framework 13 AMD I still lived in the USA and was waitlisted. Ages later I needed my shipping address in Taiwan and they had to completely change a bunch of stuff to make it work. Initially they wanted to put me back on a waitlist but I basically begged and they made it happen. So I guess they maintain two different warehousing and logistics operations between the two countries.
- imglorp 2y agoThe Framework website right now: You are now in line. Thank you for your patience. Your estimated wait time is 7 minutes. We are experiencing a high volume of traffic and using a virtual queue to limit the amount of users on the website at the same time. This will ensure you have the best possible online experience. What the hell, Cloudflare? CDN with a wait time, really?
- aroman 2y agoLol - it's not that Cloudflare can't handle the traffic. It's the _framework_ can't handle the traffic and set up Cloudflare to ratelimit entry using their Waiting Room[0] product. Clearly poorly messaged if it made you think it was a Cloudflare capacity issue! [0] https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/waiting-room/ https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/wai...
- winrid 2y agoQuite funny as one of these desktops could likely handle the traffic :)
- lionkor 2y agoNot when every second line of code in the framework (haha) used really boils down to 250 calls and abstractions, when most of it is probably just strcpy()
- rkagerer 2y agoWTF indeed, Framework. The whole point of a CDN is to keep your website operational when the number of visits scale up. A "waiting room" might as well be a 404. Here's a screenshot of https://frame.work/ca/en/blog/category/news https://frame.work/ca/en/blog/category/news: https://i.imgur.com/7BcLyCX.png https://i.imgur.com/7BcLyCX.png There's nothing up there that couldn't be statically cached.
- frosting1337 2y ago
- hart_russell 2y agoWhy would they have soldered RAM? Isn't that antithetical to their mission?
- frosting1337 2y agoIt kind of is, and the CEO admits it on stage, but it's soldered because of an AMD limitation they couldn't work around.
- WhyNotHugo 2y ago> soldered-down CPU and GPU and soldered-down, non-upgradeable RAM. They’ve brought some of the traditional modularity from desktop into the laptop world, and now bring us typical laptop design to the desktop world. Keeping things in perfect balance.
- desireco42 2y agoThis desktop will be perfect for me, as well as 12" lappie... Give me 128Gb of ram with good number of processor cores that is not $5K or so. I am already moving towards Linux, this will be the moment. I was looking from GMKTex and Beelink to have at least 64Gb, but this is fantastic deal and I can't wait for it.
- Kye 2y ago>> "A fully loaded 128GB with a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 configuration (16 CPU cores, 40 GPU cores) will run you $1,999." That's a no-brainer to replace my laptop-as-desktop in the next few years. By then, I expect this will be even better.
- rcarmo 2y agoI was actually looking at getting a 395 Max with that 8060s iGPU and looking for mini-PCs or motherboards. This should make a killer console replacement with Bazzite (once they sort out the minor niggles that come with the new chipset).
- rpcope1 2y agoWhy on earth would someone buy this instead of a regular PC setup, especially at that price point? There's no way I would pay that sort of money and not be able to change out the GPU and RAM, and also only have a single PCIE 4x slot.
- gunalx 2y agoSad about the soldered ram. Socketable ram is not that of a perf downgrade and much more in line.
- poisonborz 2y agoI wisth the 12" wouldn't have a garbage screen - although I'm hopeful for more options later on. This format would be equally if not more useful for gaming/business use case, I wonder why they start at the entry level.
- Hackbraten 2y agoCuriously, what do you feel is wrong about the 12" screen? Two years ago, I switched from my 15" MacBook Pro to the 12" Framework, never looked back. What am I missing?
- themacguffinman 2y agoIt'd be hard for me to miss the HDR/Dolby Vision color and brightness and the significantly higher resolution/PPI of the macbook display.
- Dunedan 2y agoThe Framework Laptop 12 is new, you probably switched to a Framework Laptop 13. As it's visible from existing material the bezels on the Framework Laptop 12 will be huge and as it's a touchscreen, its readability will be worse.
- poisonborz 2y agoThe 400 nits mainly (looked dim in the presentation even), no high refresh rate, 1440p would have been nice. Unrealted but also only Intel options in 2025?
- dajonker 2y agoThe Ryzen APU could be interesting for running local AI models and with 128 GB of RAM you can fit quite a large model. Plus it should be relatively energy efficient compared to a full size desktop build with separate GPU. Lack of PCIe 5.0 is a bit of a bummer as you could otherwise plug in some new Samsung 9100 Pro NVMe drives. Would love to see how it performs. It supposedly has a memory bandwidth of 256 GB/sec which is about similar to a Threadripper Pro 7965WX with 8 memory channels. A Mac Studio M2 Ultra has 800 GB/sec of bandwidth though (which is RTX4080/RTX5080 territory) but is also about 2-3x more expensive at 128 GB of memory, not to mention the cost of upgrading internal storage.
- sliken 2y agoThey should work just fine, sure peak bandwidth will be limited, but most workloads are not bottlenecked by I/O bandwidth on PCIe 4, but are limited by IOPs which should be decent on the 9100.
- syntaxing 2y agoTangentially related but what does a “Radeon 8060S” mean? I’m so confused what the memory bandwidth is and how much VRAM (I think it’s shared?). I was gonna buy a M2 studio for local LLM but this seems like a good choice. But I can’t figure out what the token/s would be like. I have Qwen2.5 3B running on a Mac mini M1 and it’s not great. Slow and gets stuff wrong. If I can get the 14B running with a response time below 3 seconds for Home Assistant, it would be perfect. Edit: found it, 256 GB/s for the shared memory bandwidth
- totalhack 2y agoHappy to see them announce the new AMD chips in the 13", but the prices are a little nuts compared to what you can get elsewhere. I bet the desktop is interesting, but first I was in a 30m waiting room to access their website (what?!?) and then the button to pre order the desktop is broken. Ouch.
- hinkley 2y agoI wish there were any chance in hell that they could turn a profit on a blade server model. I kinda want a backplane with a dozen Framework motherboards plugged into it. That ITX board looks like it's a stone's throw away.
- VTimofeenko 2y agoCoolermaster case has a vesa mount, so it's kind of rackmountable that way.
- enthdegree 2y agoIn the title, how does "unique" contradict "strange?"
- resoluteteeth 2y agoI am also wondering this
- rogual 2y agoI think in the minds of not-particularly-literate online writers, "strange" = "bad" and "unique" = "good".
- mixmastamyk 2y agoI like framework and have two of the 13s, one Intel one AMD. Am happy with both but the AMD doesn’t support S3 sleep, and so I mildly regret buying it. Will probably not leave my desk often. Also don’t believe they support ECC memory yet. Don’t think I’ll buy another PC without it.
- smm11 2y agoI got a job some time back, at the interview they asked where I got tech news. I said ARS Technica, and they looked at me like I'd sprouted another head. They fired me a few weeks in, but then went out of business.
- dismalaf 2y agoTranslucent case? Ryzen CPU with the massive integrated GPU? Definitely my next laptop.
- jdprgm 2y agoIt's a real shame the memory isn't a 512 bit bus or higher for comparable bandwidth to apple's M max series. If they had accomplished that at this price they would sell like crazy I think for AI. Having the downsides of soldered ram without the upsides of pushing it to a much higher bandwidth is a bummer. I assume that is on AMD though and not something Framework could control. Regardless happy to have more options. I really hope there are more options in the near future for integrated boards with a large variety of bandwidth choices and ram capacities.
- acomjean 2y agoThe announcement video. The desktop is 15 minutes in. (After the notebook announcements) https://www.youtube.com/live/dnCGwii7FqY?si=0ppcg_cjj8I-5P67 https://www.youtube.com/live/dnCGwii7FqY?si=0ppcg_cjj8I-5P67
- mohsen1 2y agoif you're in the Local LLMs world this is an interesting choice. All they care about is lots of fast RAM. 128GB at $2k is a good price when compared to Mac Studios
- FloatArtifact 2y agoI'm pretty torn when to self-host AI 70 B models. The market seems to be evolving fast. Outside of Apple, this is the first product to really compete in this category Self-host AI. So... I think a second generation will be significantly better than what's currently on offer today. Rationale below... For a max spec processor with ram at $2,000, this seems like a decent deal given today's market. However, this might age very fast for three reasons. Reason 1: LPDDR6 may debut in the next year or two this could bring massive improvements to memory bandwidth and capacity for soldered on memory. LPDDR6 vs LPDDR5 - Data bus width - 24 bits, 16 bits Burst length - 24 bits, 15 bits Memory bandwidth - Up to 38.4 GB/s, Up to 6.7 GB/s - Camm ram may or may not be maintain signal integrity as memory bandwidth increases. Until I see it implemented for a AI use-case in a cost-effective manner, I am skeptical. Reason 2: - It's a laptop chip with limited PCI lanes and reduced power envelope. Theoretically, a desktop chip could have better performance, more lanes, socketable (Although, I don't think I've seen a socketed CPU with soldered RAM) Reason 3: In addition, what does hardware look like being repurposed in the future compared to alternatives? - Unlike desktop or server counterparts which can have a higher cpu core count, PCEe/IO Expansion, this processor with its motherboard is limited on re-purposing later down the line as a server to self-host other software besides AI. I suppose could be turned into a overkill, NAS with ZFS and HBA Single Controller Card in new case. - Buying into the framework desktop is pretty limited based on the form factor. Next generation might be able to include a 16x slot fully populated, a 10G nic. That seems about it if they're going to maintain the backward compatibility philosophy given the case form factor.
- mistercheph 2y agoSo cool for LLM inference, wish they had the cajones to ship some soldered lpddr in a laptop form factory for the bandwidth, but i guess ill have to wait for the lpcamm generation to arrive
- NoPicklez 2y agoBit of an odd one really, they've introduced modularity and customisation to the laptop market where there wasn't any. But they have now introduced reduced modularity and customisation in comparison with what's available in the desktop market. CPU is soldered, RAM Is soldered and the GPU is soldered.
- torginus 2y agoCool but this shows off the absolute pointlessness of the Framework concept - when you have RAM, CPU and GPU integrated, you essentially have something as modular as a modern Mac, which goes against any idea of modularity. This has been the future for more than a decade, evidenced by stuff like smartphones and games consoles, and as far as I know, Nvidia is also working on their SoC, and so does Intel (which I think was the whole point of their gaming GPU push).
- jcgl 2y agoHow can you say that when a laptop (let’s agree to focus on the FW laptops for now) has so many other components beyond the SoC/mainboard? Even ignoring the fact that the FW 13 and FW 16 have socketed/upgradable RAM, you’ve got the chassis, the screen, the wireless card, storage, the keyboard, and more. If you had bought the FW 13 upon release (in 2021, I think), you have already had several opportunities to upgrade the guts of the computer while keeping everything else the same. If my CPU is no longer suitable for my needs, then why should I have to also replace my display? If it were a desktop computer, that’d obviously be preposterous. And FW has made products that make it preposterous for laptops too. On the whole, I think you may be confusing the goals of repairability and upgradability with the notion of modularity. They’re not wholly unrelated of course, but they are different, and I think it’s clear that FW accomplishes those goals. Signed, Someone who wishes they had a FW
- locusm 2y agoA 12 month warranty for a $3000 AUD motherboard is a bit rough.
- anacrolix 2y agoI've been building mini ITX systems since 2013, trying to accomplish what they've done. It's a kickass form factor. All in one systems like this are wicked, and they've pushed for modularity too, which is the reason to do this rather than a laptop or enterprise product (not Framework laptops tho, which is their draw too). Very excited.
- flanked-evergl 2y agoSad that Framework laptops are still not available in Northern Europe, but I guess having regulation that makes new and small players unfeasible is important for some reason.
- whazor 2y agoFramework is available in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. I think they are only missing Norway. One of the issues in Europe is that each country has their own language and custom keyboard.
- flanked-evergl 2y agoRIP Norway (where I am). I thought it was all of Northern Europe. Most keyboards for Norway are the same as Swedish and Danish. Maybe I can do a gray import from Denmark or Sweden.
- butz 2y agoInternal PSU - instant buy.
- aurareturn 2y ago128GB is quite useless when the bandwidth is 256GB/s (~210 real world). The sweet spot is 64GB but the M4 Pro Mini 64GB is a better deal at that RAM capacity.