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Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

arstechnica.com

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Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#291

Post by [deleted] »

sunshowers wrote: post #20
onli wrote: post #14

Framework 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 produc…

There'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.

[deleted]

Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#292

Post by ant6n »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #59
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #16

Up to 128 GB RAM available for running AI models. Theoretically awesome, but this might have some interesting market consequences for everyone else.

The 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.

But you can use an AMD EPYC cpu and get 460GB/s bandwidth. Could probably get 512GB RAM for a lot cheaper than 5K.

Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#293

Post by totalhack »

Happy 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.

Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#294

Post by WillAdams »

bryanhogan wrote: post #157
jzb wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, that's far more interesting to me than the desktop thing. I have a 13" Framework now, but a 12" would be super-nice as a travel laptop -- and the tablet conversion might let me use it as a on-the-go ebook reader.

For me as well, this sounds much more exciting. A laptop tablet hybrid that I can actually repair would be great. Would use tablet mode for image editing and hand-written notes.

Same.

I've been looking at a Raspberry Pi 5 paired w/ a Wacom One Gen 2 13 inch screen or a Movink 13 --- will probably stick with that since I prefer Wacom EMR (and have a big investment in it in terms of devices and styluses).

Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#295

Post by SSLy »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #280
danielEM wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a framework choice, that is an AMD architecture that doesn't use regular RAM modules as it requires wider data bus

I don't know anything about RAMs or their bus size. Is this something that will be "fixed" in the future, idk, with DDR6? Meaning we can have replacable RAM with such bus.

There isn't any standard to put that kind of RAM on DIMM-like slots.

Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#296

Post by SSLy »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #271
rokweom wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently this is due to signal integrity. AMD says swappable RAM is not possible. Source: LinusTechTips video.

The non-MAX Ryzen laptops also announced today actually use socketed RAM. I guess they'd claim it is only the MAX AMD procs which force soldered RAM, but since they could as well have used a non-MAX chip (and correspondingly reduce the price) this just shows how much of this is an arbitrary, and therefore questionable, decision from Framework rather than any restriction AMD sets.

Yes, and they have less BW than this solution.

Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#297

Post by awiesenhofer »

piskov wrote: post #254
abound wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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.

They 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)

> low-price alternative to mac mini

This starts at 1099$ per the article, so the mac mini is the low-price alternative here.

Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#298

Post by natebc »

znpy wrote: post #223
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t quite get why framework focuses so much on Intel and AMD. ARM laptops are in the rise, and don’t need active cooling. It’s hard for me to think of upgrading to another laptop with fans when so many fanless (I.e.: silent) options are available.

They are a fairly small company, and going for amd/intel means reaching the widest audience. Linux on arm is very mature, but windows on arm not completely. That being said, other companies could very well develop and sell boards for the frameworks laptop. So much so that iirc sifive did release a risc-v laptop board to use in the frameworks laptop case.

Is Windows on ARM still immature? I'd think with the Microsoft Surface (ARM processors for several years now) that Windows on ARM would be fine but I've never owned or used one so I don't have any anecdotal evidence, just my assumptions.

Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#299

Post by CharlesW »

hug wrote: post #206
CharlesW wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RAM upgrades at reasonable prices… The RAM is not upgradable.

Parent clearly means upgrade at time-of-purchase. FTA: > Because the memory is non-upgradeable, we’re being deliberate in making memory pricing more reasonable than you might find with other brands.

The bit you quoted back to me says, "the RAM is non-upgradable", which is what I said. Your interpretation (that the parent commenter misspoke) is more generous, though, so let's go with that.

Re: Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC

#300

Post by lionkor »

winrid wrote: post #246
aroman wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol - 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/wai...

Quite funny as one of these desktops could likely handle the traffic :)

Not 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()
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