Framework's first desktop is a strange–but unique–mini ITX gaming PC • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by p_l » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:09 AM UTC

WD-42 wrote: post #395

iamtheworstdev wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't know about other people's experience - but my framework with intel cpu is always running that fan relatively maxed out even when it's not doing anything. And it has massive issues staying asleep which is some sort of driver issue with Windows. But I can be an airport and all of a sudden my backpack feels like it's about to combust and i can hear my laptop fan rippin', even though it should be asleep.

Some new laptops cannot actually fully suspend to ram. It sounds crazy but I had this issue even after installing Linux on a laptop. It’s a hardware limitation. You can thank Microsoft for trying to make sure they can sneak in OS updates when you think your laptop is asleep.

It's not sneaking in OS updates, it's faster wake-up mainly.

Combined with properly prepared HW taking less power in modern standby than in S3, but it requires hardware/firmware/driver/userland confluence to work well

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

#552

Post by p_l » Mon, Mar 03, 2025, 11:20 AM UTC

pge wrote: post #310

MadnessASAP wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the best of my knowledge the ARM ecosystem is an absolute pain to work in, you can get Phone/Tablet SoCs painfully encumbered with out of date drivers and binary blobs. Or you can get enormous server processors that will cost $1000+. There just isn't much that's suitable for making a desktop or laptop that would meet Frameworks markets expectations.

what about the Snapdragon? Microsoft is using in their ARM laptops

And even Microsoft is dealing with pain points like Qualcomm he, few, and drivers actually breaking the spec and causing problems in servicing and supporting the ARM based devices.

Meanwhile properly SBSA compliant chips aren't targeted at mobile market at all and thus often lack certain features or are too energy hungry.

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

#553

Post by mixmastamyk » Thu, Mar 06, 2025, 7:09 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #547

mixmastamyk wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article 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.

The 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; tha…

I don't think that would be economical on the back, not to mention airflow issues. Framework seemingly came to the same conclusion.

Also, was hard to see--there are more than six ports on the back. There's plenty of ports, many usbc and usba, which can be daisy chained.

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

#554

Post by pzo » Fri, Mar 07, 2025, 7:50 AM UTC

h14h wrote: post #134

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…

This isn't competing with normal desktops. Better to think of it as a competitor to Mac Studio & Nvidia Digits, which are much less repairable by comparison. The soldered memory is an unfortunate reality of these "unified" memory systems. The only way to get a traditional desktop with 96GB of VRAM is to spend upwards of $10K loading it up with 2-4 GPUs.

I just wish they could provide additional options:

1) have ram soldered but provide also extra 1 slot for LPCAMM/LPDIMM ram. Soldered RAM would be used for GPU but external slower ram still could be used for non GPU related stuff (software) that doesn't require high bandwidth/latency.

2) I think motherboard will have 4 pads for ram and if you buy less 1-3 pads will be just having pins without chip. If they would sell memory chips and provide some tooling/documentations for specialised/certified shop they could solder those. You could still upgrade just not by yourself.