New products:
- AMD Ryzen 300 13" motherboards
- Translucent bezels (just 13"?) and expansion cards
- ITX desktop
- 12" 2-in-1 convertible
Not too exciting for me, personally.
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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I can't recall anyone ever asking FW for a desktop PC. It's like the one modern electronics product that's already modular. And it looks like they're selling them with mobile processors only also, which, why?
As for the convertible, there's no AMD option?
Nor did I see any details regarding pricing, and their website is 404'd to hell.
E: Got into the website, still no pricing available for 12" convertibel.
Yea, I don't see the point of the desktop, but it sounds more like they are pushing it towards AI servers for the small players.
It's a great compute box and small form factor gaming machine. Perfect for supplementing a server with some local AI performance or using it as a living room gaming PC. Definitely not something everyone needs, but me and the friend I watched this with are already each planning to get one.
I would definitely have considered the Framework desktop in my younger days, when I didn't want a laptop, but the smalles desktop possible. But in what Framework do and is known for, I think it's a bit meh.
That's reasonable, but unfortunately, soldered memory will probably become more and more common. Apple Silicon and now these AMD chips have shown that it is genuinely much more capable. This performance would not be possible without it.
Framework still ensured the desktop is as repairable as possible in every way that they can control. It will undoubtably be more repairable than other ITX PCs in the same class. I've worked on some ITX PCs in the past, and some of them are HELL to repair. Even a lot of full sized prebuilds are really frustrating to repair. Many Dell and HP desktops use proprietary parts, making repair expensive.
soldered memory will probably become more and more common
at least if you want to extract every bit of performance.
Patel noted on LTT that they tried to get modular ram on there, but it's just not possible. The signal integrity is not holding up
but it's just not possible
I mean it's probably "not possible" to convince AMD to engineer it for the few of us that actually care. There are other comparable socketable technologies.
The thing is that companies will want to extract more performance, so customers may eventually lose the option. I hope not, but I do see it as a possibility.
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For inference (running previously-trained models that need lots of RAM), the desktop could be useful, but I would be surprised if training anything bigger than toy examples on this hardware would make sense because I expect compute performance to be limited.
Does anyone here have practical recent experience with ROCm and how it compares with the far-more-dominant CUDA? I would imagine that compatibility is much better now that most models are using PyTorch and that is supported, but what is the performance compared to a dedicated Nvidia GPU?
Desktops are usually modular, but at that price, with that chipset, and in an ITX form factor, you are not getting something remotely repairable from other companies.
Actually, you aren't getting anything, because nobody is selling a desktop with that chipset for this price.
nobody is selling a desktop with that chipset for this price
Not yet, but it's still very new. There's only one other product you can buy with that chip that I know of, but there will be more, especially by the same this device actually becomes available for delivery.
True, it may change, but it's still very likely those devices will be less repairable than Frameworks desktop.
I suspect that the PC was mostly made because AMD offered to let them release a fancy CPU and they wanted to make a product that would hopefully get a different audience to hear about them. Given the emphasis that it's just a PC, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't bother making new parts for it down the line unless it sells well enough that it can fund them continuing to make a PC line. Since, as they repeatedly pointed out, it's all standard connections, it's not a problem if they stop releasing new parts, unlike their other product lines.
The convertible will probably take a year or two to shake off the rough edges, same as the 13 and the 16 have/are still doing, I'm interested to see how it does down the line once it's been out for a while and they've had time to respond to user feedback.
- They mentioned something to the effect of that chip being preferable for AI because of how its 128 GB of memory is so tightly integrated directly into the processor. I don't know much about AI, but that seems to be the only use this thing has going for it over the alternative. Also, I don't think they mentioned anything about it, but it looked like its case had at least two expansion card slots. Though that is far from revolutionary compared to a standard mini ITX PC you could build yourself.
- Nope, convertible was only mentioned to be 13th gen Intel.
- I do not recall prices being revealed for any of the other products, but the Desktop came in three SKUs, costing something like 1099-1999 USD.
Yeah, the processor itself is a big deal, but that processor will also be available in a myriad of other products, and the Framework one will be no more repairable or upgradeable. So they're not really bringing anything special to the table in that regard.
convertible was only mentioned to be 13th gen Intel.
I don't even understand why they even bother to make them available at all with Intel. They've been left in the dust for years by AMD. Who is buying these?
They did mention their price being very competitive, so that is probably how they intend to differentiate it from other products with the same processor.
There's a LTT video that popped up and it does look like they're aiming for another very budget device. They said "definitely" under $1k which doesn't really tell us much.
I think the main thing with the desktop is that it's a release platform for AMD's new chip (the board is also available by itself), and that the high memory bandwidth is good for machine learning
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There is also the new one key module for hopefully new community designs on input modules for the framework laptop 16.
And a keyboard with a Framework logo instead of a Windows logo! While the Framework 16 had an option for a "Super" key, that is entirely new for Framework 13
I'm worried about Framework over-extending themselves with so many different products that each require a different set of parts. It's sure going to hurt the brand if in a few years they start discontinuing product line-ups with no upgradable path forward. For instance they didn't announce any new upgrades for the 16.
The Framework 12 better have a very competitive price or else it probably won't sell that good, if they are aiming for that target group.
A bit sad they didn't announce more GPU's for the Framework 16, but I'll just have to be patient.
Excited to order the new Framework 13 :D
I'm fairly confident it will, based on how aggressively they've priced that desktop.
Not 100% happy about diluting the case selection (and therefore lowering the part inter-compatibility), but the desktop looks damn nice.
I want that case
- Framework 13 AMD upgrades
- Framework mini desktop announced - up to 128GB capable of running 70b lamma3.3
- Framework laptop 12 announced - a touchscreen convertible laptop
Was there an AMD upgrade for the framework 16? I thought not?
nope, your right, I was mistaken
Pretty disappointing. The 12 might be interesting, not enough details yet.
No OLED yet is lame
But.... A desktop that's less repairable than a regular desktop???? Why lol?
Half of the time they spent talking about the Framework Desktop was about AI, so that is probably why.
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Less repairable than a regular desktop, more comparable than any comparable desktops.
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We got the 2-in-1 and sort of a game console
EDIT: And you could argue that the colored expansion cards are new
oh missed the 2 in 1
I haven't watched it yet but desktop case was one of the things I wanted
Ok so no desktop case but the custom keyboard thing for the 16 is great. The 12 looks awesome and the transparent expansion cards look cool
I'm a bit sad that we didn't get a FW16 upgrade. My partner's old gaming laptop is beginning to show its age and I would have loved to replace it with a FW16 that isn't two years old already.
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