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I don't understand why anyone would buy this when you can build a PC that's 2-3x as capable for the same price, that's actually repairable and upgradable.
Likely to support those ideas and signal that there is money in it. I'm not big on "letting the market figure it out", but there is logic in voting with your wallet.
I bought a System 76 for similar reason five years back. The price was comparable to a XPS, came with coreboot, and disabled Intel ME.
What ideas? The whole idea is that they're repairable/upgradable. The went into a market where those things already existed and stripped them away. Why?
I don't expect this to change your mind (I also wouldn't really want a framework desktop), but the framework desktop is fairly unique in terms of performance, which is why they stripped away some of the upgradability.
I want that upgradability more than unique performance, but to their credit they did try to make it work with socketed ram, but they couldn't get it to work because in order to share RAM between the CPU and GPU in the way they wanted (I think, I haven't looked at it super closely because I don't want one and am not in the market for a desktop cause I'm broke and have a laptop), they needed ridiculously low latency and even the new upcoming socket design they played with to get it working wasn't able to get the latency low enough, even with tweaks if I understand correctly.
I'll stick to building a conventional system if I get around to building a desktop, but to my understanding the performance of the framework desktop is higher than it looks on paper because of its funky design that needed ultra low latency memory. Its a cool product, but I do think perhaps framework were not entirely the right people to sell it, as repairability and upgradability are a massive cornerstone of their brand.
they stripped away some of the upgradability.
They stripped away pretty much all of it.
they couldn't get it to work because in order to share RAM between the CPU and GPU in the way they wanted
Then they shouldn't have made it. That's their whole shtick, and it only took them a few years to go back on it.
It's not like those speeds deliver any sort of practical advantage anyway, like I said earlier. Especially not in gaming.
It's just a lazy cash grab.
Yeah, I don't really disagree. Though I do think it's more upgradeable than if another company made the same sort of product, given you can upgrade the motherboard. But I have no real interest in it. It doesn't feel like a lazy cash grab to me. But it does feel like they're confused about who's actually buying their devices and what those people want.
Though, who knows, maybe they're selling great. What do I know. I'll stick to the industry standard of socketed components in a standard case format rather than a new novel design that can't be as upgradable.
That combo was interesting enough to me to order one to mess around with. I could build a more powerful (but probably more energy hungry...) computer in a traditional desktop form factor. I don't think I could build a better SFF computer myself though, and I'm really curious to see just how far I can push the integrated GPU in this thing...
officially supports linux
Comparing to just building a desktop, I don't think you can easily build one that isn't officially supported on linux...?
The unified memory is the only part of this machine that can't be had for way cheaper with a custom build, and it's interesting only for super niche reasons anyway.
Unified memory is very AI friendly which is not irrelevant these days.
No one said irrelevant. Running local AI is extremely niche though
Perhaps, but if one is privacy conscious, that's the way to do it. That is also one of the reasons people like Macs.
Anything to do with AI is inherently irrelevant.
Plenty of hardware won't work on Linux. Especially new hardware. Sometimes there are issues with WiFi, Bluetooth, audio, graphics, etc. So it's nice to know that if it's not working that the device is, in fact, not functioning as intended and that the company that you purchased it from will help make it right, rather than just saying "ah no one cares about Linux, sorry!".
Maybe this comment would have been accurate 10 years ago.
Would you like to explain? That's been my lived experience with only a handful of devices.
It's okay to concede that Linux isn't perfect.
It's hard to build one that you can't make work, but a lot of manufacturers don't actually officially support it. It's a minor point, but one I care about -- especially when dealing with new hardware. I'd have wasted a lot more time trying to debug what was going on with Mint if they hadn't documented the need for a 6.11 kernel on their website, for example...
lot of manufacturers don't actually officially support it
Huh???
Intel and AMD CPUs are officially supported in the linux kernel... AMD's official graphics driver is part of the linux kernel. NVIDIA offers official graphics drivers for linux, although they are proprietary.
I'd have wasted a lot more time trying to debug what was going on with Mint if they hadn't documented the need for a 6.11 kernel on their website, for example...
6.11 kernel
So... in other words... it literally is supported by the linux kernel...
I was thinking of motherboards. Some of my systems have really fucking annoying power problems. If I can't get this thing to suspend properly, for example, I can go back to Framework and try to get them to fix it. My cobbled together desktop? I'm on my own.
The only thing I could see being an issue with a desktop motherboard are built-in wifi, bluetooth, or sound chips, and that's really not been an issue to worry about for years. Complete non-issue for any Intel chipsets, which are basically all officially supported. I think otherwise I really only see like Realtek, which is supported. At worst you just need to install proprietary drivers.
Sounds like framework's motherboard has poorly implemented ACPI, but this would not be an issue for manufacturers for typical desktop hardware (ASUS, ASRock, MSI, Gigabyte)
I'm not complaining about Framework's HW there; my old desktop (which uses an ASUS MB, IIRC) had that issue. I'm on my own figuring out WTF is going wrong between the CPU, the kernel, quirks of the motherboard, BIOS, GPU -- or whatever else might be causing it to enter a boot loop if I try to suspend and then resume the system.
If I had a similar problem with the Framework system, I could go to Framework and say "Fix it!" and expect to get help because they officially support the configuration. That's my point.
Last two mainboards I bought had incompatible wifi cards. The first of those also had some weird issue with aspm that meant it ran hotter than it should have needed to.
You can build a pc with a minisforum BD795i SE (also an integrated CPU, but not LPDDR RAM, its a standard desktop mobo but small, itx, and you can't remove the 7945hx CPU)) and an AMD 9070, for under $1500, (thats including everything in the pc) and that'll do basically everything you could possibly want at 1440p.
I have a wish list on newegg that is just barely above $1500 (at least pretax), including also a decently good 32", curved 1440p monitor.
These kinds of uh, high grade laptop cpu but on an other wise standard, but small pc mobo, that can be the size of a large lunch box... these are pretty common in China, but fairly few in the West seem to have caught on.
PC part picker still doesnt even list these mobos in the right way, you can't plan a build with them, because wtf its a mobo and a cpu at the ssme time? That breaks how our website works!
For gaming, yes.
But the Framework Desktop seems to be made for a different usecase:
128GB of unified RAM
Unified means both CPU and GPU have access to it. Why would you need so much RAM and why would you care if the GPU has direct access?
Neural Networks. You can fit a pretty serious LLM into 128GB of RAM, and if GPU has direct access, still run inference at reasonable performance.
I love my 9070XT, but you can't run anything approaching what Claude or ChatGPT gives you in just 16GB of VRAM
the Framework Desktop seems to be made for a different usecase
They specifically advertise it as a gaming device. The author of this article is using it as a gaming device.
You can fit a pretty serious LLM
LLMs are fucking stupid and no one should use them.
You are absolutely right. Baffles me why they'd put 128GB of RAM in there and use an SoC arhitecture where RAM is shared with GPU, to the detriment of upgradability, if not for AI.
Any gamer would prefer upgradable RAM and upgradable GPU, especially from Framework.
How else would you explain this decision to compromise their brand values and overspend on RAM, if not AI?
... I mean... 128 gb of shared ram could be used that way...
But... you really think this is a common enough use case to design a pc around?
Like... how many people want to game, vs... run / train a local LLM?
Is this what Framework is doing, making LLM development boxes?
Not... trying to make an affordable, general use oriented, 'buy once and then upgrade with parts/modules as you prefer'?
Except for the small form factor I bought a second hand PC with those specs for £300. I think the only reasons to buy it are you really want small form factor, or you want to play with local AI and don't want to use a Mac (which is still better value for money on that front).
Not to downplay the small form factor - I do think that is cool. Just... Not £1k cool.
A long Hdmi cord got me there way easier I think.
My pre-order from February just arrived, so I've been poking at it a bit this weekend. I tried putting Linux Mint on it first. It booted but had issues (e.g. ethernet wasn't detected -- although WiFi worked fine); seems like the 6.8 kernel is too old. I've got Fedora on it instead now, and that seems to be working better so far.
Fedora is the new Ubuntu.
Always has been 😉
cachyos has kernels specifically for these AMD chips, if Fedora gives you problems or if you wanna try an Arch distro, I've been enjoying cachyos on my ryzen 395 laptop