Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 554 posts

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

#331

Post by noisy_boy »

42772827 wrote: post #200
r2vcap wrote: post #176

Framework’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 freig…

This is to comply with the ever changing export restrictions enacted by the current US administration. So don’t expect it to change soon.

Singapore has one of the most business friendly regulations, a truly tech-savvy well-off consumer base and Framework don't ship there. Its puzzling.

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

#332

Post by phonon »

starkparker wrote: post #266
brunoqc wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you prefer AMD? price, heat/fan noise?

Framework shipped AMD 7040-series and 13th-gen Core i-series alongside each other for the 13. The 13th-gen Intels had miserable battery life and heat issues under load. If you could manage that, all four USB-C ports were full Thunderbolt ports equally capable of driving displays, PD, and USB 4 throughput. The AMD line had considerably better performance-per-watt but rougher firmware support (and early on, really brok…

The two CPU models are i3-1215U and i5-1334U [1] which are 15 W parts with 2 P cores. They should be OK.

[1] https://youtu.be/-lErGZZgUbY?t=729

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

#333

Post by kllrnohj »

soerxpso wrote: post #329
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

The architecture was their choice. It's completely possible to build a PC with that form factor which does not have soldered RAM, so it's strange that they went with it. Their brand with laptops is supposed to be 'more repairable' but they've chosen to make a desktop PC that's less repairable than their laptops are? It doesn't make any sense with the rest of their lineup. The person who would want this product is the…

That market, "repairable modular desktops", is extremely saturated. This only exists because nobody was putting the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 in anything, so they got gifted the entire market of "GPUs with more than 32gb of RAM that aren't Apple." And then a desktop because fitting this in a laptop is hard (hence why nobody else is doing it, either)

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

#334

Post by rkagerer »

frosting1337 wrote: post #305
rkagerer wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF 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://i.imgur.com/7BcLyCX.png There's nothing up there that couldn't be statically cached.

Except, you know, the entire dynamic functionality of purchasing everything. Taht can't be cached.

That would be a sensible place to use a queue, too bad it's not constrained to there. I'm not familiar with how granular the CloudFlare feature is - could they have enabled it only for a portion of their site like https://frame.work/marketplace?

Otherwise, could be a good reason to use subdomains when architecting sites, say shop.framework.com.

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

#335

Post by kllrnohj »

awiesenhofer wrote: post #297
piskov wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This starts with 32GB of RAM, so no the mac mini isn't the low priced alternative at that point.

Also fully spec'd at 128gb is $2000, which only gets you a 64gb mac mini

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

#336

Post by kjs3 »

saurik wrote: post #259
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 don't seem to care about needing a fan, and the community on their forums is actively hostile--even brutal--to people who don't want a fan (the zeitgeist there seems to believe that any compromise to performance at all costs is incompetence). It is particularly frustrating as you don't even have to go ARM to drop the fan: there are chips even from Intel that do not need fans, such as any of the ones in all of th…

So they're exactly like the gaming PC community. "Decibels aren't a benchmark", as an enthusiast acquaintance says. If you want to go fanless, you need to go to a silent PC community. Where their forums is actively hostile--even brutal--to people who do want a fan.

There are a lot of more or less weird, very dedicated, very opinionated subcultures in the PC hardware world.

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

#337

Post by elabajaba »

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.

Linux on arm is actually pretty terrible outside of the server space due to their (Qualcomm, Imagination, and ARM) integrated GPUs being bad and having terrible drivers.

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

#338

Post by ed_mercer »

aroman wrote: post #231
imglorp wrote: post #186

The 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?

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...

This is weird. You can’t handle the load of a planned announcement on your landing page, in 2025? Something tells me their CTO role could use a new hire.

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

#339

Post by zamadatix »

kllrnohj wrote: post #333
soerxpso wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The architecture was their choice. It's completely possible to build a PC with that form factor which does not have soldered RAM, so it's strange that they went with it. Their brand with laptops is supposed to be 'more repairable' but they've chosen to make a desktop PC that's less repairable than their laptops are? It doesn't make any sense with the rest of their lineup. The person who would want this product is the…

That market, "repairable modular desktops", is extremely saturated. This only exists because nobody was putting the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 in anything, so they got gifted the entire market of "GPUs with more than 32gb of RAM that aren't Apple." And then a desktop because fitting this in a laptop is hard (hence why nobody else is doing it, either)

> This only exists because nobody was putting the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 in anything... And then a desktop because fitting this in a laptop is hard (hence why nobody else is doing it, either)

The Ryzen AI Max+ 395 was paper launched a month ago. What Framework announced here is just another pre-order (even batch 1 won't ship until Q3). There are dozens of other systems, including mini-PCs, announced months ago which are set to launch before this. Small laptops were actually the first 395+ products to launch, hence this month's benchmark reviews all used them. E.g. https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/laptops/gaming-laptops/a...

I would not be surprised if one will be able to get a full 128 GB 395+ mini PC for less than the cost of the Framework Desktop baseboard before the Framework Desktop actually starts arriving in hands. What you're buying here is a premium to be able to replace the shell and front USB ports.

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

#340

Post by kjs3 »

natebc wrote: post #298
znpy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My brother is on the Windows side of the world (MS partner and all that, lots of CRM/DB work). He said if you stick to mainstream apps (MS apps, Adobe, etc) ARM is basically on parity with x86, tho not the performance choice. He said these days he rarely has customers come with support issues that boil down to "bug only occurs on ARM", though "it's slow on ARM" does come up. OTOH...If you have specialty/niche apps that you rely on, or apps from a small dev who doesn't have the resources to support 2 archs, your mileage may vary.
Post reply on HN