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Framework Laptop 13 gets ARM processor with 12 cores via upgrade kit
- woodrowbarlow 11mo agohere's the actual listing: https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc i posted the article instead because it has some details that aren't on the listing.
- jeffbee 11mo agoIt also has basically no details. What even is the difference between the Standard and Pro offering at twice the price?
- hecanjog 11mo agoIt looks like the pro is the version with the full framework laptop chassis, battery, etc, and the standard is the version in the coolermaster case. (The black one with antennas on top)
- cmrdporcupine 11mo agoThese Snapdragon X processors have some drama around not having decent Linux support, right? EDIT: Sorry, not SnapdragonX - apparently I can't read. Also, who is "MetaComputing" and can I trust them with my money? Something about the big "Web 3 Integrated Devices" branding on their landing page makes me less than enthusiastic. Otherwise I'd be hovering over 'buy'
- celrod 11mo agoThey're 8x A720 + 4x M520, not Snapdragon X.
- tencentshill 11mo agoThey are selling a configuration that costs $810.00 on Framework's website for only $549.00. Zero actual info on the about page or Google. I would treat it with suspicion at best.
- ndiddy 11mo agoThey're just selling the motherboard on its own, not a whole laptop. To make if a complete system, you'd have to buy a laptop chassis from Framework's parts site and install the motherboard yourself.
- evanjrowley 11mo agoYou can get a whole laptop if you purchase the "Pro" option that comes with the Framework 13 chassis: https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc
- izacus 11mo agoThis isn't a Snapdragon though.
- cmrdporcupine 11mo agoOh, crap, guess it helps if I read next time.
- emmp 11mo agoNo interest in this exactly, but I am interested in the idea that third parties are now targeting the Framework form factor explicitly to sell upgrades/replacements outside of the Framework marketplace.
- browningstreet 11mo agoMy first thought was, "How many units could they possibly expect to sell given this target?"
- cmrdporcupine 11mo agoSounds like the board also somehow works inside a mini-itx chassis or something?
- clhodapp 11mo agoIt's not standard mini-itx. Since the physical form factors for their laptop boards are published publicly and are somewhat stable, are "desktop" cases for them.
- throwuxiytayq 11mo agoGiven it's a Framework 13 mainboard, you can probably put it in any Framework 13-compatible enclosure: https://frame.work/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case https://frame.work/products/cooler-master-mainboard-case https://frame.work/products/framework-laptop-13-mainboard-home-server-kit https://frame.work/products/framework-laptop-13-mainboard-ho... https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Framework-Laptop-13 https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Framework-Laptop-13 etc., lots of designs available.
- ndiddy 11mo agoThis board uses the CIX CP8180 SoC, which has worse performance and significantly worse efficiency than even Apple's M1 chip. See Jeff Geerling's review of a desktop with this SoC: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/minisforum-stuffs-entire-arm-homelab-ms-r1 https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/minisforum-stuffs-ent... If you need an ARM Linux laptop, it's probably a better choice to get a used M1 or M2 MacBook Pro and put Fedora Asahi on it.
- cmrdporcupine 11mo agoYeah, or if you don't mind something with performance this low, the RK3588 has much better kernel support (I have a couple here) and there's some companies offering laptop format for those now. But as much as I love the RK3588 it's very much in the "low perf utility SBC" world than "good performing general PC". I use my two boards for NAS, Plex, Forgejo CI builders, etc. I do recall that Jeff Geerling I think had some followup with that board that perhaps there could be firmware changes that improve the power efficiency later maybe?
- bpye 11mo agoI have an MNT Pocket Reform with an RK3588 and I do like the device, but yeah, it can be a little sluggish at times. It is very usable for email, editing documents, code review, etc - but it will struggle if you're trying to multitask heavily. This CIX SoC is a fair bit faster than the RK3588 though I believe.
- cmrdporcupine 11mo agoThere's an RK3688 coming next year (hopefully?) which looks like a perf bump.
- chrisweekly 11mo agoApple hardware, yes. Fedora Asahi, maybe. OrbStack^1 provides awesome flexibility and DX/UX, w/ minimal footprint. 1. https://orbstack.dev/ https://orbstack.dev/
- csdreamer7 11mo agohttps://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc https://metacomputing.io/products/metacomputing-arm-aipc Save you a click or two. Looking at this I have so many questions. Am I buying a mainboard? It is not clear. It lists ports: it only supports 2 ports? You have four options with 16/32gigs and 1tb of storage? Is the storage soldiered? If so, what is the storage? emmc? Soldiered memory seems to be a given in the ARM ecosystem, but the storage is completely unacceptable on a framework mainboard. The only difference between the pro and the regular is that the second port is a usb-c over an hdmi? I am assuming this is the mainboard even supporting framework extension cards. No listed Linux compatibility support. Forget if the NPU even works in Linux; I do not even know if this will boot Linux because the company did not bother to submit devicetree patches to the kernel for their SOC. No listed Windows support even. This company's copy is absolutely terrible.
- woodrowbarlow 11mo agomy impression was the "pro" is the same board but comes with a framework 13 chassis, but yeah the lack of explicit details does not inspire confidence.
- mtklein 11mo agoThis is astonishingly bad power usage for a laptop, a complete dealbreaker: "...early tests show that the SoC already draws about 16 watts at idle..."
- cuu508 11mo agoyeah, that is impressively bad. Perhaps a reporting error and it is 16W at full tilt?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- antonkochubey 11mo agoFor some context, my 12-core Intel laptop consumes 1.5 to 2 watts at idle for the SoC. Apple M silicon might consume even less.
- bigyabai 11mo ago> upgrade kit > makes your laptop slower Hmm...
- gary_0 11mo agoMaybe it's a typo and it's 1.6W.
- MBCook 11mo agoSo this isn’t an official thing, this is a 3rd party selling a replacement motherboard, is that right?
- toshinoriyagi 11mo agoCorrect, it's not sold by Framework, but is a replacement mainboard sold by a 3rd party. I think that is one of the big appeals of a modular laptop like Framework, though. You can create an ecosystem around it, customize, and not be locked in to just what the primary manufacturer makes.
- MBCook 11mo agoYeah it’s a good feature. Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t misreading the situation.
- znpy 11mo agoI'm curious to see battery life reports over this. Chances are these arm chips will not be beating intel/amd on battery life. Also worth looking at battery life compared to performance...
- 999900000999 11mo agoI don't have much faith in Arm Linux. Tuxedo gave up. Cheap Windows Arm laptops are flooding the market, if someone can pick ONE laptop to support they could easily buy them on sale , refurbished them with Linux and make a profit. Looks likes their are some challenges with doing this.
- winterqt 11mo agoSupposedly the ARM ThinkPads are alright on Linux.
- jonkoops 11mo agoNot really. The drivers are not upstream, so it only works well on specially made Ubuntu spins that carry out of tree patches and random binary blobs. It is really still quite a mess at the moment.
- danans 11mo ago> It is really still quite a mess at the moment. Integration, testing, and support are all expensive. Right or wrong, that's a reason why if a laptop "just works" (like a Mac, Windows Thinkpad, or a Chromebook), it probably has proprietary binaries. Also, if you aren't paying for the OS (via the hardware it's coupled with), you can't expect the OS to have the benefits of tight hardware integration. Even Framework laptops use proprietary boot firmware, and they've been pretty clear that they only provide support for Ubuntu and Fedora, not the alphabet soup of other Linux desktop distros.
- Havoc 11mo agoPity it’s not snapdragon. That may have improved chance of snapdragon Linux becoming viable
- einpoklum 11mo agoGreat, now there's just the matter of getting a proper keyboard, rather the junk that most laptops these days have. https://kickingandstreaming.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/x220_keyboard_crop.jpg https://kickingandstreaming.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/x2...
- coffeeaddict1 11mo agoI'd like to ask HN a very vaguely related question. I need to get a self-hosted runner (for GitHub Actions) that is capable of running Windows ARM64. What are my options other than buying a machine and do everything manually? Are there any service providers that offer Windows ARM64 VMs? I can only seem to find options for Linux.
- paxys 11mo agoYour best bet is probably Azure. Otherwise you can spin up an AWS graviton VM and install windows on it yourself.
- 6SixTy 11mo agoMicrosoft offers Windows on ARM servers. Could slam the Windows ARM ISO on a 3rd party VPS as well.
- coffeeaddict1 11mo agoAny recommendation for an Arm vps? I tried using a Hetzner server but apparently their server offering doesn't support mountint Windows Arm images.
- khazit 11mo agoIn case you don't already know, there are Github-hosted runners that run Windows arm64 [1] Also, it's not what you're asking, but self-hosted runners are a security nightmare if you don't have the hardware to completely isolate them from your local network. [1] https://github.com/actions/partner-runner-images/blob/main/images/arm-windows-11-image.md https://github.com/actions/partner-runner-images/blob/main/i...
- coffeeaddict1 11mo agoThey don't seem to be available for private repos (unless you sign up for Github Teams or Enterprise).
- NoSalt 11mo agoI would love to have a Framework laptop, but there is no guarantee the company will be around as long as, say, Lenovo, Dell, Apple, etc., and I would hate to get used to being able to customize on the fly, then have to go back to a run-of-the-mill laptop just because Framework went out of business.
- vaylian 11mo agoIn the worst case you would have used your Framework just like a regular laptop from Lenovo, Dell or Apple. You might not gain much, but you also don't lose anything. But that's just the worst case.
- flankstaek 11mo agoBetter to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all. Why not buy the Framework, support the business, and have a laptop that's making you happy while it's around? There's no guarantee any company lasts forever. What's the point in not using something now because it might be gone in the future?
- nish__ 11mo agoIf the company goes under, someone else will probably start manufacturing parts. Their CAD designs are open sourced on GitHub.
- anthonyryan1 11mo agoDoes this board boot Linux via a device tree, or have hardware discovery? How about UEFI vs arm-specific bootloaders? I tried arm32 Linux a few years back, and the largest hindrance at the time was the device trees and non-UEFI boot process. Given up on exploring the platform further (except maybe for SBC like raspberry pi) until that situation improves.
- woodrowbarlow 11mo agothe minisforum ms-r1 has the same SoC and supports UEFI
- aseipp 11mo agoThe CIX CP8180 uses UEFI (it is intended to boot Windows which requires it) but the boot flow can, I believe, use either ACPI or device trees, based on a boot setting. The ACPI boot flow has the advantage that any normal Linux distro should work, while the device tree variant I think has more hardware enablement. The upstream story due to this is kind of a mixed bag, though. I think they also still use out-of-tree NPU drivers, etc. Device trees and other updates are still flowing upstream. I think the next Mesa release will support the Immortalis GPU series though, so that'll hopefully polish off a big remaining problem with ordinary distros.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- ktallett 11mo agoThe complaints about battery life are valid however I see this as a test board to help bring more Linux programs to life on ARM. It can also be useful for porting other OSes like Haiku.
- Nav_Panel 11mo agoI've had a Framework 13 for several years now, so I'm excited to see this kind of thing start to happen. Praying the next one out is a GPU/tensor workload unit so I'm not stuck at home on my desktop when I want to mess around with local AI models...
- timpera 11mo agoWindows 11 ARM64 is the best operating system I've ever used for a laptop. Really excited to see this, although I wish this was a Snapdragon X CPU.
- daft_pink 11mo agoThe real problem with ARM is whether the software vendors are really supporting it. I use business software everyday that doesn’t support ARM, because of it’s licensing system doesn’t work on ARM processors. Instead of fixing it, the company just sells cloud hosted windows licenses for $100 per user.
- kelnos 11mo ago> early tests show that the SoC already draws about 16 watts at idle Ooof. I feel like power efficiency would be the main reason I'd take the plunge and switch from x86_64 to arm64, given that there would be difficulties and trade offs software-wise to do so. My 13th-gen Intel board in my Framework 13 sits at around 11W semi-idle (Firefox constantly burning 35% of one core for reasons that are my fault). And this is with Linux, where power management isn't always the best. Regardless, I'm happy to see something like this. It might not be something I want today, but it's a step in the right direction.
- nubinetwork 11mo agoIt's either a firmware or soc thing, hoping they can fix it without having to spin a new chip. O6 owners keep bringing it up, but personally I don't care since in my case it's lower than the hardware it's replacing.
- retired_account 11mo ago> The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite have proven that ARM processors have earned a place in the laptop market That’s a strange revision of fairly recent history. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Apple’s the one that proved out laptop ARM at scale.
- prmoustache 11mo agoArm powered chromebooks did that earlier than Apple Silicon laptops.
- evanjrowley 11mo agoAll the way back in 2012: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/review-samsungs-new-arm-chromebook-gets-by-without-intel-inside/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/review-samsungs-new-...
- j45 11mo agoIt does make me wish I could drop in a macbook air motherboard into a framework to get a differnet kind of ARM processor.
- r2vcap 11mo agoQualcomm talked a lot about Snapdragon X Elite as the future of Windows and Linux on ARM, but results so far are mixed. Windows on ARM is finally usable on recent laptops, yet compatibility gaps remain, and Linux support is still far from mature. The high idle power on the Framework ARM upgrade board shouldn’t be blamed solely on MetaComputing or CIX. Poor idle power efficiency is a long-standing issue on Linux laptops, especially with new platforms, so this looks more like an ecosystem-level power-management problem than a single-vendor failure. What stands out to me is that Chinese companies are actually shipping hardware and pushing into every possible market segment. Their decentralized, diversified corporate ecosystem seems to enable fast experimentation and broad market penetration.
- t312227 11mo agohello, as alwas: imho. (!) is it possible to install for example a current "vanilla" debian arm64 on this mainboard!? what i mean by that: write the "official" debian arm64 installation image to a thumbdrive, press some key & boot into the installation!? and run the resulting system with the distributions "offical" kernel from the debian arm64-architecture!? w/o jumping thru a few "hoops" like a lion in a circus ... ;) i know ... the "openness" of the descendants of ibm pc at compatible machines was some kind of a "historical" error by ibm, but i got used to it!! i like to "own" hardware i bought with my hard-earned money. i heavily prefer hardware, which is easily bootable from "inoffical" boot-medias - read: FOSS ... eg. linux/*BSD/... and i'm not interested in "clamped down" hardware a la "most" available ARM boards - regardless of notebooks/tablets/phones ... just my 0.02€
- hulitu 11mo ago> This processor has a total of eight ARM Cortex-A720 performance cores, the two fastest can hit boost clock speeds of up to 2.6 GHz Impressing. Athlon speed. And boost, and only 2 of them. Trully impressing. > This chipset is likely slower than the Snapdragon X Elite or a current flagship smartphone chip, but it should still provide enough performance for many everyday tasks. This read out like: 640k should be enough for anybody.