Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique

"To enable the massive 256GB/s memory bandwidth that Ryzen AI Max delivers, the LPDDR5x is soldered," writes Framework CEO Nirav Patel in a post about today's announcements. "We spent months working with AMD to explore ways around this but ultimately determined that it wasn’t technically feasible to land modular memory at high throughput with the 256-bit memory bus. Because the memory is non-upgradeable, we’re being deliberate in making memory pricing more reasonable than you might find with other brands."

😒🍎

Edit: to be clear, I was only trying to point out that "we’re being deliberate in making memory pricing more reasonable than you might find with other brands" is clearly targeting the Mac Mini, because Apple likes to price-gouge on RAM upgrades. ("Unamused face looking at Apple," get it? Maybe I emoji'd wrong.) My comment is not meant to be an opinion about the soldered RAM.

To be fair it starts with 32GB of RAM, which should be enough for most people. I know it's a bit ironic that Framework have a non-upgradeable part, but I can't see myself buying a 128GB machine and hoping to raise it any time in the future.
If you really need an upgradeable machine you wouldn't be buying a mini-PC anyways, seems like they're trying to capture a different market entirely.
- My biggest gripe about non replaceable components is the chance that they'll fail. I've had pretty much every component die on me at some point. If it's replaceable it's fine because you just get a new component, but if it isn't you now have an expensive brick.
  I will admit that I haven't had anything fail recently like in the past, I have a feeling the capacitor plague of the early 2000s influenced my opinion on replaceable parts.
  I also don't fall in the category of people that need soldered components in order to meet their demands, I'm happy with raspberry pis and used business PCs.
- According to the CEO in the LTT video about this thing it was a design choice made by AMD because otherwise they cannot get the ram speed they advertise.
- seems like they're trying to capture a different market entirely.
  Yes that's the problem.
Yeah hugely disappointed by this tbh. They should have made a gaming capable steam machine in cooperation with valve instead :)
- Yeah.
  But that's AMD's fault, as they gimped the GPU so much on the lower end. There should be a "cheap" 8-core, 1-CCD part with close to the full 40 CUs... But there is not.
- They still could; this seems aimed at the AI/ML research space TBH
- This is an AI chip designed primarily for running AI workflows. The fact that it can game is secondary
Well, more specifically: why didn’t they try to go for LPCAMM?
- From what I understand, they did try, but AMD couldn't get it to work because of signal integrity issues.
- Because you’d get like half the memory bandwidth to a product where performance is most likely bandwidth limited. Signal integrity is a bitch.
Would 256GB/s be too slow for large llms?
- It runs on the gpu

Framework releasing a Mac Mini was certainly not on my bingo card for this year.

I wasn’t prepared. I’ve been eyeing a mini for a while and this thing kills it on value compared to what I would get in a similar price point.
- What alternatives were you considering, and how does the product from Framework compare?
Ok, should I know who framework is? I've been a PC gamer since forever and I've never heard of this company.
- They make repairable laptops.

Lmao the news about this desktop is strangling their website to the point of needing a 45 minute waiting list

They did announce three major products today.
- Yeah that touchscreen tablet convertible machine is what has me psyched. I'm not the target for it, and already own a 16, but I could see that thing selling well. I honestly think they came out with the desktop because they just kinda felt they needed a desktop.
Guilty. This thing came out at the perfect time and I was considering building my own or a Mac mini but this has 95% of what I’m looking for for less than a spec compromised Mac mini. So I preordered. And I kept hitting refresh lol.
- I always think the Mac mini is just a bit too mini. It's a desktop so it's not exactly going to be moved around a lot so it doesn't need to be quite that tiny and this thing is a good compromise between still being small but without being so small that it offers no upgradability.
  And I know Apple says otherwise but surely that thing must get thermally throttled at some point.
The Lemmy Lick strikes again!
I visited their website literally within about 10 minutes of them announcing the product and I had to wait 8 minutes to get in.
If framework has, or had, one problem, it was that the main appeal of their products was the repairability, the products themselves were only okay in terms of specs. Well now they have really decent specs as well.
I could absolutely see schools wanting to deploy these to their students.

Not really sure who this is for. With soldered RAM is less upgradeable than a regular PC.

AI nerds maybe? Sure got a lot of RAM in there potentially attached to a GPU.

But how capable is that really when compared to a 5090 or similar?

The 5090 is basically useless for AI dev/testing because it only has 32GB. Mind as well get an array of 3090s.
The AI Max is slower and finicky, but it will run things you'd normally need an A100 the price of a car to run.
But that aside, there are tons of workstations apps gated by nothing but VRAM capacity that this will blow open.
- Useless is a strong term. I do a fair amount of research on a single 4090. Lots of problems can fit in <32 GB of VRAM. Even my 3060 is good enough to run small scale tests locally.
  I'm in CV, and even with enterprise grade hardware, most folks I know are limited to 48GB (A40 and L40S, substantially cheaper and more accessible than A100/H100/H200). My advisor would always say that you should really try to set up a problem where you can iterate in a few days worth of time on a single GPU, and lots of problems are still approachable that way. Of course you're not going to make the next SOTA VLM on a 5090, but not every problem is that big.
- … but only OpenCL workloads, right?
Not really sure who this is for.
Second sentence in the linked article.

Holy moly this is awesome! I am in for the 128GB SKU.

That's 96GB of usable VRAM! And way more CPU bandwidth than any desktop Zen chip.

I know people are going to complain about non upgradable memory, but you can just replace the board, and in this case it’s so worth it for the speed/power efficiency. This isn’t artificial crippling, it physically has to be soldered, at least until LPCAMM catches on.

My only ask would be a full X16 (or at least a physical X16/electrical x8) PCIe slot or breakout ribbon. X4 would be a bit of a bottleneck for some GPUs/workloads… Does Strix Halo even support that?

I understand the memory constraints but it does feel weird for framework, is all I have to say. But that's also the general trajectory of computing from what it seems. I really want lpcamm to catch on!
- Apparently Framework did try to get AMD to use LPCAMM, but it just didn't work from a signal integrity standpoint at the kind of speeds they need to run the memory at.
- Eventually most system RAM will have to be packaged anyway. Physics dictates that one pays a penalty going over pins and mobo traces, and it gets more severe with every advancement.
  It's possible that external RAM will eventually evolve into a "2nd tier" of system memory, for background processes, spillover, inactive programs/data, things like that.
What's a SKU? Google just says "Stock Keeping Unit", but I don't think that's correct in this context.
- It's correct. A product with various options will have each combination of options under a different SKU. It's a singular number that identifies an exact version of a product.
- In this context, SKU refers to a variant of this product. That is the correct acronym as I understand
- its used to mean a new product that you specifically have to keep track of. e. g if you found framework desktops in a store, it wouldnt all be sold under 1 sku. all 3 ram capacities would be 3 different bar codes
- As others said.
  In this context it would be one of the CPU/Memory combinations framework offers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Ryzen_processors#Strix_Halo_(Zen_5/RDNA3.5/XDNA2_based)
- Basically another word for 'Product Number' or 'P/N' for short.
How did you get from 128 GiB of RAM, as the reported specs, to 96 VRAM ?
- “VRAM” has to be allocated to the integrated GPU in the BIOS, and reports (and previous platforms) suggest the max one can allocate is 96GB, or 3/4 of it.
but you can just replace the board
The board is like, the whole computer tho. The mobo, CPU, GPU and RAM are all the same component. It's everything Framework is supposed to oppose. That took them what, 4 years? to throw away their values?
- They also announced three other products (one new, two refreshes) which are still being actively developed and are fully-modular devices at low cost. If they're "throwing away their values," they're not doing it very well.
- It's what happens when you go through rounds of funding.

Soldered on ram and GPU. Strange for Framework.

Apparently AMD couldn’t make the signal integrity work out with socketed RAM. (source: LTT video with Framework CEO)
IMHO: Up until now, using soldered RAM was lazy and cheap bullshit. But I do think we are at the limit of what’s reasonable to do over socketed RAM. In high performance datacenter applications, socketed RAM is on it’s way out (see: MI300A, Grace-{Hopper,Blackwell},Xeon Max), with onboard memory gaining ground. I think we’ll see the same trend on consumer stuff as well. Requirements on memory bandwidth and latency are going up with recent trends like powerful integrated graphics and AI-slop, and socketed RAM simply won’t work.
It’s sad, but in a few generations I think only the lower end consumer CPUs will be possible to use with socketed RAM. I’m betting the high performance consumer CPUs will require not only soldered, but on-board RAM.
Finally, some Grace Hopper to make everyone happy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gYqF6-h9Cvg
- I definitely wouldn't mind soldered RAM if there's still an expansion socket. Solder in at least a reasonable minimum (16G?) and not the cheap stuff but memory that can actually use the signal integrity advantage, I may want more RAM but it's fine if it's a bit slower. You can leave out the DIMM slot but then have at least one PCIe x16 expansion slot. A free one, one in addition to the GPU slot. PCIe latency isn't stellar but on the upside, expansion boards would come with their own memory controllers, and push come to shove you can configure the faster RAM as cache / the expansion RAM as swap.
  Heck, throw the memory into the CPU package. It's not like there's ever a situation where you don't need RAM.
- Honestly I upgrade every few years and isually have to purchase a new mobo anyhow. I do think this could lead to less options for mobos though.
- Sound like a downgrade to me I rather have capability of adding more ram than having a soldered limited one doesn't matter if it's high performance. Especially for consumer stuff.
- There's even the next iteration already happening: Cerebras is maling wafer-scale chipa with integrated SRAM. If you want to have the highest memory-bandwith to your cpu core it has to lay exactly next to it ON the chip.
  Ultimately RAM and processor will probably be indistinguishable with the human eye.
Ye the soldered ram is for sure making me doubt framework now.
- Signal integrity is a real issue with dimm modules. It's the same reason you don't see modular VRAM on GPUs. If the ram needs to behave like VRAM, it needs to run at VRAM speeds.
- Apparently AMD wasn't able to make socketed RAM work, timings aren't viable. So Framework has the choice of doing it this way or not doing it at all.
Not strange at all.
They're a business that makes its money off of selling hype to morons.
- Just buy a ThinkPad, if you’re thinking about buying a Framework…

Calling it a gaming PC feels misleading. It's definitely geared more towards enterprise/AI workloads. If you want upgradeable just buy a regular framework. This desktop is interesting but niche and doesn't seem like it's for gamers.

I think it’s like Apple-Niche

I feel like this is a big miss by framework. Maybe I just don't understand because I already own a Velka 3 that i used happily for years and building small form factor with standard parts seems better than what this is offering. Better as in better performance, aesthetics, space optimization, upgradeability - SFF is not a cheap or easy way to build a computer.

The biggest constraint building in the sub-5 liter format is GPU compatibility because not many manufacturers even make boards in the <180mm length category. Also can't go much higher than 150-200 watts because cooling is so difficult. There are still options though, i rocked a PNY 1660 super for a long time, and the current most powerful option is a 4060ti. Although upgrades are limited to what manufacturers occasionally produce, it is upgradeable, and it is truly desktop performance.

On the CPU side, you can physically put in whatever CPU you want. The only limitation is that the cooler, alpenfohn black ridge or noctua l9a/l9i, probably won't have a good time cooling 100+ watts without aggressive undervolting and power limits. 65 watts TDP still gives you a ryzen 7 9700x.

Motherboards have the SFF tax but are high quality in general. Flex ATX PSUs were a bit harder to find 5 or 6 years ago but now the black 600W enhance ENP is readily available from Velkase's website. Drives and memory are completely standard. m.2 fits with the motherboard, 2.5in SATA also fits in one of the corners. Normal low profile DDR5 is replaceable / upgradeable.

What framework is releasing is more like a laptop board in a ~4 liter case and I really don't like that in order to upgrade any part of CPU, GPU or memory you have to replace the entire board because it's soldered on APU and not socketed or discrete components. Framework's enclosure hasn't been designed to hold a motherboard+discrete GPU and the board doesn't have a PCIe slot if you wanted to attach a card via riser in another case. It could be worse but I don't see this as a good use of development resources.

I think the biggest limiting factor for your mini PC will always be the VRAM and any workload that enjoys that fast RAM speed. Really, I think this mini PC from framework is only sensible for certain workloads. It was poised as a mobile chip and certainly is majorly power efficient. On the other hand I don't think it is for large scaling but more for testing at home or working at home on the cheap. It isn't something I expected from framework though as I expected them to maintain modularity and the only modularity here is the little USB cards and the 3D printed front panel designs lol
Edit
Personally I am in that niche market of high RAM speed. Also, access to high VRAM for occasional LLM testing. Though it is an AMD and I don't know if am comfortable switching from Nvidia for that workload just yet. Renting a GPU is just barely cheap enough.

Question about how shared VRAM works

So I need to specify in the BIOS the split, and then it's dedicated at runtime, or can I allocate VRAM dynamically as needed by workload?

On macos you don't really have to think about this, so wondering how this compares.

It's typically dynamic
On my 7800, it’s static. The 2GB I allocate is not usable for the CPU, and compute apps don’t like it “overflowing” past that.
This is on Linux, on a desktop, ASRock mobo. YMMV.
It will most likely be dynamic, with the option to statically set it.

I don't get the point. Framework laptops are interesting because they are modular but for desktop PCs that's the default. And Framework's PCs are less modular than a standard PC because the RAM is soldered

That makes no sense - that’s more like Apple then…
I don’t know if it’s the case, but modular IO on PC maybe nice.

This is one stupid product. It really goes against everything the framework brand has identified with.

I'd argue not. It's as modular/repairable as the platform can be (with them outright stating the problematic soldered RAM), and not exorbitantly priced for what it is.
But what I think is most "Framework" is shooting for a niche big OEMs have completely flubbed or enshittified. There's a market (like me) that wants precisely this, not like a framework-branded gaming tower or whatever else a desktop would look like.
- It's as modular/repairable as the platform can be
  It can't be. That's the point.
Desktops are already that, though. In order for them to distinguish themselves in the industry, they can't just offer another modular desktop PC. They can't offer prebuilts, or gaming towers, or small form factor units, or pre-specced you-build kits. They can't even offer low-cost micro-desktops. All of those markets are saturated.
But they can offer a cheap Mac Studio alternative. Nobody's cracked that nut yet. And it remains to be seen if this will be it, but it certainly seems like it's lined up to.
- I'm not super well informed, but a socketable AMD nuc form factor machine would've been nice, single pcie, m.2 and 2 sodimm ram slots would've been good. Could've even given the option to route the pcie slot externally and offered an add on egpu case that's actually worth a damn a la mega drive/sega cd.
It's a straight up gimmick flanderizing the brand identity.

Now, can we have a cool European company doing similar stuff? At the rate it's going I can't decide whether I shouldn't buy American because I don't want to support a fascist country or because I'm afraid the country might crumble so badly that I can't count on getting service for my device.

I could envision MNT Research trying this in the future, but not for now.
- Wow, that stuff looks awesome! Thanks for sharing 🙏
https://mntre.com/index.html
https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next
Wait I thought they were a Taiwanese company?
- This comment made me double check. They're from San Francisco: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_Computer
  I'd prefer to buy taiwanese tbh. 😉

This is not really that interesting and kinda weird given the non-upgradability, but I guess it's good for AI workloads. It's just not that unique compared to their laptops.

I'd love a mid-tower case with swappable front panel I/O and modular bays for optical drives; would've been the perfect product for Framework to make IMO.

The mini's are the latest new hotness for desktop computing. I've been running a dirt cheap $90US, mini for 2 years now. It fits extremely well on my desk, just tucked in under the monitor leaving plenty of room for all the other tasks I do daily.
Will it play the latest hot new video game? Nope. But it will run OnlyOffice, FreeCAD and FreeDoom just fine.
They’d be competing with a bajillion other case makers. And I’m pretty sure there are already cases with what you ask (such as 5.25 bay mounted IO running off USB headers, at least).
Like… I don’t really see what framework can bring making a case. Maybe it could be a super SFF mobo with a GPU bay, but that’s close to what they did here.
- There may be already such a case but you and me have never heard about it and it's probably by some chinese no-name brand.
  A proper metal mid-tower case with modular front panel I/O (using Framework's system with the USB-C converters) and modular optical drive/hard drive bays would be unique.
It’s just not that unique compared to their laptops.
This'll be a good sell for the useful idiot crowd that has been conditioned to think gaming laptops are the devil.

At first I was skeptical during the announcement and then I saw the amount of ram and the rack. Imho it is not for enduser but for business. In fact we have workloads that would be perfectly fit that computer so why not?

its definitely a small business and homelab focused device. ill 100% be getting one for some local AI compute in my lab.

The Framework Desktop is powered by an AMD Ryzen AI Max processor, a Radeon 8060S integrated GPU, and between 32GB and 128GB of soldered-in RAM.

The CPU and GPU are one piece of silicon, and they're soldered to the motherboard. The RAM is also soldered down and not upgradeable once you've bought it, setting it apart from nearly every other board Framework sells.

It'd raise an eyebrow if it was a laptop but it's a freakin' desktop. Fuck you framework.

insanely hostile response to something like this. they attempted to have these parts replaceable, AMD physically couldn't do it. they've still made it as repairable as possible, and will without a doubt be more repairable than similar devices using this chipset. fucking relax, being reactionary without being informed is dumb.
- will without a doubt be more repairable than similar devices
  It's a desktop, they're repairable unless you solder something in.
  using this chipset
  They could've gone with any other chipset, making the whole thing irrelevant to begin with, but they couldn't please the AI crowd that way.
- We need to stop bending over backwards to lower our standards for the people making money off of us.
  Have higher standards.
  Don't be a useful idiot.
I get the frustration with a system being so locked down, but if 32gb is the minimum I don’t really see the problem. This pc will be outdated before you really need to upgrade the ram to play new games.
- It's not just about upgrading. It's also about being able to repair your computer. RAM likes to go bad and on a normal PC, you can replace it easily. Buy a cheap stick, take out the old RAM, put in the new one and you'll have a working computer again. Quick & easy and even your grandpa is able to run Memtest and do a quick switch. But if you solder down everything, the whole PC becomes electronic waste as most people won't be able to solder RAM.
- 🥱
Seriously that's really disappointing. It really seems like investors decides that they needed to "diversify" their offering and they need something with AI now ... Framework was on a good path imo but of course a repairable laptop only goes so far since people can repair it and don't need to replace it every 2 years (or maybe just replace the motherboard) so if you want to grow you need to make more products ...
- Honestly this is exactly the product I was waiting for minisforum to make. I think this is actually a pretty solid move.
- I agree. We need less soldered RAM designs. I thought repairability was something they appreciated.
- Well tbh they still do have repairable laptops, even new ones and all that, and the "excuse" is that the only way to properly use that specific AMD CPU is with that specific RAM and the non.soldered bus wasn't enough, but still... i'll stick to old #ThinkPads, thank you.

Much like their laptops, I'm all for the idea, but what makes this desirable by those of us with no interest in AI?

I'm out of that loop though I get that AI is typically graphics processing heavy, can this be taken advantage of with other things like video rendering?

I just don't know exactly what an AI CPU such as the Ryzen AI Max offers over a non-AI equivalent processor.

There is a massive push right now for energy efficient alternatives to nvidia GPUs for AI/ML. PLENTY of companies are dumping massive amounts of money on macs and rapidly learning the lesson the rest of us learned decades ago in terms of power and performance.
The reality is that this is going to be marketed for AI because it has an APU which, keeping it simple, is a CPU+GPU. And plenty of companies are going to rush to buy them for that and a very limited subset will have a good experience because they don't have time sensitive operations.
But yeah, this is very much geared for light-moderate gaming, video rendering, and HTPCs. That is what APUs are actually good for. They make amazing workstations. I could also see this potentially being very useful for a small business/household local LLM for stuff like code generation and the like but... those small scale models don't need anywhere near these resources.
As for framework being involved: Someone has kindly explained to me that even though you have to replace the entire mobo to increase the amount of memory, you can still customize your side panels at any moment so I guess that is fitting the mission statement.
- For modularity: There's also modular front I/O using the existing USB-C cards, and everything they installed uses standard connectors.
what makes this desirable by those of us with no interest in AI?
Juat maybe not all products need to be for everyone.
Sometimes it's fine if a product fits your label of "Not for me".
There's lots of workstation niches that are gated by VRAM size, like very complex rendering, scientific workloads, image/video processing... It's not mega fast, but basically this can do things at a reasonable speed that you'd normally need a $20K+ computer to even try. Like, if something takes hours on an A6000 Ada or an A100, just waiting overnight on one of these is not a big deal. Cashing or failing to launch on a 4090 or 7900 XTX is.
That aside, the IGP is massively faster than any other integrated graphics you'll find. It's reasonably power efficient.
I hate how power hungry the regular desktop platform is so having capable APUs like this that will use less power at full load than a comparable CPU+GPU combo at idle, is great, though it needs to become a lot more affordable.
- Production costs are not low either, and AMD still needs to profit. AMD's APUs are already very affordable.
Much like their laptops
Its nothing like their laptops, thats the issue :/ Soldered in stuff all around, nonstandard parts that make it useless for use as a standard PC or gaming console.
- Sorry, I was stating that "much like their laptops, I like the idea of these desktops." I was not trying to insinuate that they themselves are alike.

and more at people who want the smallest, most powerful desktop they can build

Well, there's this:

Yeah, the screw holes didn't fit, that's why. And the cooler didn't fit the case, obviously. And the original cooler not the CPU's turbo. It's fine, it still runs most games in 3k on the iGPU.

The bowing on that board makes me think it’s not much longer for this world.
- It's like this even if i lay it on the desk. Was always like this. ¯(ツ)/¯

It's kinda cool but seems a bit expensive at this moment.

- I swear, you people must be paid to shill garbage.
  Always a response for anyone who has higher standards, lol.

I really hope this won't be too expensive. If it's reasonably affordable i might just get one for my living room.

they already announced pricing for them.
1099 for the base ai max model with 32gb(?), 1999 for fully maxed with the top sku.
- With a cheeky comparison to Apple's nearly $5k offering.
- $1k for the base isn't horrible IMO, especially if you compare it to something like the mac mini starting at $600 and ballooning over $1k to increase to 32GB of "unified memory" and 1tb of storage.
  I get why people are mad about the non-upgradable memory but tbh I think this is the direction the industry is going to go as a whole. They can't get the memory to be stable and performant while also being removable. It's a downside of this specific processor and if people want that they should just build a PC
- Bummer

These little buggers are loud, right?

Hmm, probably not. I think it just has the single 120mm fan that probably doesn't need to spin up that fast under normal load. We'll have to wait for reviews.
- I also just meant given the size constraints in tiny performance PCs. More friction in tighter spaces means the fans work harder to push air. CPU/GPU fans are positioned closer to the fan grid than on larger cases. And larger cases can even have a bit of insulation to absorb sound better. So, without having experimented with this myself, I would expect a particularly small and particularly powerful (as opposed to efficient) machine to be particularly loud under load. But yes, we'll have to see.
The Noctua fan option should be pretty quiet.
- I have a Noctua fan in my PC. Quiet AF. I don't hear it and it sites beside me.

So... now Framework Corp is selling non-upgradable hardware?

I dunno. Conceptually I want to like Framework. But their pricing means it is basically never worth buying and upgrading versus just buying a new laptop (seriously, run the numbers. You basically save 10 bucks over two generations of shopping at Best Buy). But they also have a system that heavily encourages people to horde spare parts rather than just take it to an e-waste disposal facility/bin.

You get fast memory as a result. If you don't care about the fast memory, there's no good reason to buy this, with their motherboard. There's a use case this serves which can't be served by traditional slotted memory and the alternative is to buy 4-5 NVIDIA 3090/4090/5090. If you want that use case, then this is a pretty good deal.
- And your phone isn't repairable because it needs to be water proof. Your earbuds because of power efficiency. Etc.
  Also, I suggest watching this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3zB9EFntmA.
  But, to be clear: I am actually not as opposed to the idea of soldered ram when you have "an excuse". Same with phones. But framework is a brand that tries to build itself on minimizing e-waste and maximizing repairability and... hey, at least we can still swap out the side panel on their prebuilt!
It will be faster than most next-gen laptops, and it's much cheaper than a similarly-specced Asus Z13. Strix Halo uses a quad channel 8533Mhz bus, 2 full Zen CCDs like you find in desktops/servers, and a 40 CU GPU. Its more than twice the size/performance of two true "laptop chips" put together.
Everything except the APU/RAM/Mobo combo is upgradable, and you don't have to replace the whole machine if the board fails.
I mean, if you don't need that kind of compute/RAM, this system is not for you, and old gaming desktops are probably better deals for pure gaming. But this thing has a niche.
- Everything except the APU/RAM/Mobo combo is upgradable, and you don’t have to replace the whole machine if the board fails.
  So... storage, case, and USB C dongles?
- I think the framework desktop would be an absolute powerhouse as a workstation desktop.
  Think developers ( that still use desktops ), people who do raw computational power for science, servers, ai development, ...
No, the pc is upgradable. They explicitly said in the event that the desktop was suppose to be an actual desktop with replaceable parts as much as technically possible. Only ram is tied to the mobo/cpu because of technical limitations of the amd cpu
- At least memory is soldered on because of high throughout they say.
their pricing means it is basically never worth buying and upgrading versus just buying a new laptop (seriously, run the numbers. You basically save 10 bucks over two generations of shopping at Best Buy).
Maybe so. But the big difference is, you can upgrade iteratively rather than taking the entire hit of a new device all at once. So I can buy all of the individual components of my next laptop a few hundred dollars at a time over the course of a couple of years, and use them as I get them. By the time I've ship-of-theseus'd the whole device, I may have spent the same amount of money on that new computer, but I paced it how I wanted it. Then I put all of the old components into an enclosure and now I can use it as a media center or whatever. Plus, if something breaks, I can fix it.
- What exactly can you upgrade iteratively?
  From the laptop perspective (because the desktop is totally all about that side panel life):
  Memory: Ultrabooks are hell, no arguments there. But many brands have increasingly allowed at least one SODIMM to be swapped out and many still no longer solder the other one. And I'll say, from personal experience, that buying and swapping out RAM in a relatively new-ish laptop often comes out closer to the price of just paying for the upgraded SKU to begin with. So there is the logic of "I'll add another 16 GB in two years" but... yeah.
  Storage: Again, same. Except that they tend to not even solder down the nvmes. There are some particularly asshole vendors but they are few and far between. And this totally is worth doing since they tend to be fairly standard nvme drives or the small SSD that I always forget the format of. Rather than RAM that is only used by laptops and NUCs and costs an arm and a leg...
  Ports: Framework laptops just use USB C dongles for everything. They have a semi-proprietary format for those but it is still, fundamentally, a usb c dongle. And, from talking to a mutual on a discord who has one, it has the same fundamental problem that USB C dongles/hubs do when installing the more finicky OSes (hi Proxmox and OpnSense) where you can't actually access the hub capabilities until AFTER the OS is installed (the more live CD based distros avoid this). So no difference in terms of upgrades and modularity outside of having fewer vendors to buy a dongle from if you care about form factor that much.
  CPU: Only if you swap out the motherboard which is the vast majority of the price of the laptop anyway.
  Keyboard, display, etc: These are less "upgrades" so much as replacements. Which are good arguments for repairability but also... go actually look at ifixit's website and see how many laptops are repairable. It is mostly just apple who suck horrifically
  And just because it always amuses me and never fails, let's price out upgrading/replacing a framework (uplacing?). I'll assume no parts failed to keep prices simple and "You can replace your keyboard every time it fails over a five year period" is not the flex people think it is. I'll use the intel core ultra series 1 because that is in stock and not a preorder. We are dealing with last year's model (I think. I haven't followed Intel laptop processors too much) so there is inherently wiggle room there, but it is theoretically fair as it is last year's model for both of them since I had to dig deep into the framework site to find an Intel since fuck Best Buy's website if you are trying to compare AMDs (also fuck AMD for their naming insanity).
  FW13 with Intel Core Ultra Series 1 at 13 inches is estimated to be 999 USD https://frame.work/products/laptop13-intel-ultra-1/configuration/new. 8 Gigs of RAM, Ultra 5 125H, 256 GB Storage
  Core Ultra 5 Series 1 at 13 inches. Ultra 5 125U so techincally different but arguably much better for an actual laptop. 256 GB storage, 8 GB RAM. ... Eothas wept at this URL https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-probook-460-g11-16-ips-1920-x-1200-wuxga-laptop-intel-core-ultra-5-with-8gb-memory-256-gb-ssd-pike-silver-aluminum-gray/6601496.p?skuId=6601496. Estimated to be 879.99 USD
  So we are already looking at the framework being about 120 USD more expensive without looking at any configurations or upgrades.
  So let's get into that hyperbolic time chamber and totally not have gay sex with the glistening man hunk known as Vegeta. Five years later, let's consider an upgrade... to the same SKU.
  On the Framework marketplace, another 125H mobo costs 399 USD right now.
  Framework: 999 + 399 = 1398 for two generations of a laptop
  Best Buy: 879 + 879 = 1758
  For a total savings of 1758-1398 = 360 USD over 5 years of getting soaked by that galick gun
  Which is nothing to balk at. But that assumes that your display and keyboard held up and didn't need replacing, you liked all the default dongles Framework gave you (which is apparently just four USB C ports... to plug into the four USB C ports on the laptop), and, most importantly, that Framework didn't change their form factor (I am not sure if they did for the 16 inch laptops to support the "modular" keyboards). Every spare dongle or repaired/upgraded part costs money. Versus being guaranteed a "pristine" new laptop... full of massive amounts of bloatware that you immediately format the shit out of to put Linux on that.
  And, obvious grain of salt, the past few times I have done this exercise it was closer to 100 USD. Framework just happen to be dumping large amounts of old stock right now for their new models so the prices are better and the comparisons are more tedious.
  Again, conceptually I like Framework. And, for as much as I mock them, I actually do like the form factor for their dongles a lot. Give me a computer with a shit ton of USB C ports but also let me leep it usable at work without needing to carry around my sketchy anker dongle/dock. And I don't really fault them too much for not letting you actually swap CPUs since that was basically something only the sickest of sickos did until the AM4 socket lasted like 40 years somehow.
  But their key strength is marketing and that has only gotten stronger since they got the full power of linus media group behind them because that company needs to protect their shareholders' investment.
  And, like I said before, I do worry that this just encourages people to hoard parts. Like... anyone who has built a desktop or two has that big plastic bin full of old ram and mobos and even graphics cards that they might use someday but never will (PSU is totally worth saving though).

This is a standard a370 mini PC at a high price.

There's Beelink, Minisforum, Aoostar and many others.

The AI max chips are a completely different platform, more than double the physical silicon size of most minipc chips.
- Most miniPC vendors have already announced AI Max products:
  https://www.gmktec.com/blog/gmktec-a-global-leader-in-ai-mini-pcs-unveils-the-amd-ryzen-ai-max-395

Are they going to at least make memory modules available for those who want to solder their own?

You can order those directly from chip suppliers (mouser, digikey, arrow, etc.) for a lower cost than you could get them from framework. Also those are going to be very difficult to solder/desolder. You're going to need a hot air station, and you need to pre-warm the board to manage the heat sink from the ground planes.
- Not as impossible sounding. I mean I would never attempt it but you might be able to get away with it using a stencil, solder paste and one of those fancy toaster ovens with a broil setting. ROI would suck since you are probably gonna fail the first couple of times.

Really framework ? Soldered ram ? How dissapointing

The CEO of Framework said that this was because the CPU doesn't support unsoldered RAM. He added that they asked AMD if there was any way they could help them support removable memory. Supposedly an AMD engineer was tasked with looking into it, but AMD came back and said that it wasn't possible.
- Specifically AMD said that it's achievable but you'll be operating at approx 50% of available bandwidth, and that's with LPCAMM2. SO/DIMMs are right out of the running.
  Mostly this is AMDs fault but if you want a GPU with 96-110 GBs of memory you don't really have a choice.
But the front panel is customizable

So can someone who understands this stuff better than me explain how the L3 cache would affect performance? My X3D has a 96 MB cache, and all of these offerings are lower than that.

This has no X3D, the L3 is shared between CCDs. The only odd thing about this is it has a relatively small "last level" cache on the GPU/Memory die, but X3D CPUs are still kings of single-threaded performance since that L3 is right on the CPU.
This thing has over twice the RAM bandwidth of the desktop CPUs though, and some apps like that. Just depends on the use case.
- and some apps like that.
  I'd wager a guess: AI?

To anyone complaining about non-replaceable RAM: This machine is for AI, that is why.

Think of it like a GPU wirh a CPU on the side, vs the other way around.

Inference requires very fast ram transfer speed, and that is only possible (currently) on soldered buses. Even this is pretty slow at 256Gb/s, but it's RAM size of 96GB to GPU makes it interesting for larger models.

What's crazy is I still can't make it onto their website without waiting in a 20 minute queue. Stupid.

I guess that’s kinda the point? It will ship with 128GB soldered.

Xbox with the ability to run windows is what the article is basically saying.

Or linux.
This thing makes a whole lot of pricey workstations obsolete.
- I think I need to give Linex a try again. I tried ubuntu in 2008 but found it too difficult to do the things I was used to doing on windows. I now have a bit more coding experience and will probably pick it up quicker
- What kind of workstations?
Love the downvotes for saying something that is in the article! Feels just like reddit!

Looks like a pile of shit for easily-impressionable morons, but that's to be expected from framework.

What exactly do you want instead?
- Great products for great prices!