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Framework’s new desktop is mini ITX
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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Soldered CPU on a desktop: DOA.
SOLDERED RAM ON A DESKTOP: lol. Lmao even. What the fuck. What ever happened to "you should be able to fix your stuff"? Their laptops have user-replaceable ram btw. This is a joke.
the CPU has such a high memory bandwidth, that it wasn't possible to used socketed ram. Signal integrity was not holding up.
They tried to get it to run with socketed ram
Then don't sell it.
then don't buy it. if it doesn't sell, they won't release a second one
You're missing the point. Framework has a very finite amount of resources. They could have dedicated them to making a printer or a phone or a tablet or any number of other products people have actually asked them for. Instead they dedicated it to designing a computer that anyone else could have made and sold and isn't repairable or upgradeable.
People keep shouting printer like they can just do it like that. Printers are a whole different beast, likely needing a whole seperate team with a different type of engineers. A desktop, given the existing team, is perfectly reasonable.
Calling a product DOA because of soldered ram is just a braindead take. Also, just because the ram isn't upgradable the whole desktop isn't upgradable or repairable? Are you hearing yourself? Get a grip.
No one thinks they can "just do it" but they can do it, just like they did for laptops.
A braindead take is a company that's founded on repairable and upgradeable computers selling a computer that's none of those things.
Its not just the RAM, the CPU and GPU are also not repairable or upgradeable, and this is in a class of products where everything else is...
Is your idea of repairable based on whether ram is upgradable? They tried and couldn't do it, so they had to settle for the next best thing.
RAM? CPU? GPU? Is anything at all outside of the SSD? These components make up 90% of the cost of the product so any one of them dying means it goes straight in the trash can. There's tons of hardware that doesn't have those restrictions and works just as well.
No they did not. They could have not sold it, and developed/sold something else instead.
Framework mentioned that they worked with AMD extensively to try and find a way for upgradeable memory to be on this board. The fact that they went through iterations of simulations suggests to me that the basis for the motherboard was already largely designed in this stage.
As you mentioned, framework has a finite amount of resources. Once they determined that upgradeable ram is not a valid path forward without sacrificing half the compute capabilities of the APU, what should be their next step? Just can the project that already has a motherboard design? Like folks mentioned, there's nothing really fancy outside of the motherboard. So if that works was already done, it seems financially responsible to me to provide that as an offering. AFAIK they're the only desktop form factor for this apu suitable for a cluster, so I can see why it's worth a gamble after extensive R&D was already invested into designing the hardest part of the product.
I pre-ordered the 128GB SKU in the second wave. Soldered RAM doesn't matter to me if I am already maxing out what the platform is capable of. If I can dynamically configure the memory allocation between the CPU and GPU, this will be an extremely potent little AI workstation. I'll be able to cancel the pre-order of things aren't what I expect, and it isn't much of a loss for me ($100 refundable deposit).
I do agree that this branching away from Framework's roots, but I am still very happy that they are doing interesting things. I've always thought that what Minisforum has been doing with their SFF workstations has awesome, so I'm glad to see other companies wading into the same space.
They have confirmed you will be able to set a 96GB GPU memory split (windows, 110GB on linux)
You forgot no serviceable GPU
I don't think it's a bad product but it's just so weird coming from Framework. Given how their entire shtick is easy repairs, easy upgrades, less waste by being able to recycle some of these parts you swap out into other devices, etc. It's just weird to have a soldered CPU and RAM on a desktop FROM FRAMEWORK.
I think it's more than weird. Soldered ram on a desktop would surprise me even from HP.