The Framework Desktop is a beast

https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-framework-desktop-is-a-beast-636fb4ff

96•lemonberry•1d ago

Comments

Jtsummers•1d ago

> In some ways, the Framework Desktop is a curious machine. Desktop PCs are already very user-repairable! So why is Framework even bringing their talents to this domain? In the laptop realm, they're basically alone with that concept, but in the desktop space, it's rather crowded already. Yet it somehow still makes sense.

And even more curious, Framework Desktop is deliberately less repairable than their laptops. They soldered on the RAM. Which makes it a very strange entry for a brand marketing itself as the DIY dream manufacturer. They threw away their user-repairable mantra when they made the Desktop, it's less user repairable than most other desktops you could go out and buy today.

sethops1•2h ago

The RAM is soldered on all Halo Strix platforms because physics is getting in the way. With pluggable DIMMs the memory bandwidth would be halved, at best.

wishinghand•2h ago

Why is that? Why would soldering the connections vs plugging them in affect how much data per second they transfer?

colejohnson66•2h ago

Sockets have resistance and crosstalk, which affects signal integrity.

aeonik•1h ago

Wait, your telling me, I should have been desoldering the sockets off my motherboard, and directly soldering my RAM to the leads this entire time?

ElectricalUnion•1h ago

Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM) tries to be a middle-term solution for that, by reducing how crappy your average RAM socket is to latency and signal integrity issues. But, at this point, I can see CAMM delivered memory being reduced to a sort of slower, "CXL.mem" device.

aeonik•1h ago

Seriously though,

Would desoldering the sockets help?

Why are the sockets bad?

wmf•1h ago

Yes. (That isn't actually possible because the pinouts are different but soldered RAM is faster.)

tejtm•2h ago

mind the gap

onli•2h ago

He is still right. It is a desktop PC that is less repairable than all other desktop PCs, from a brand that is known to champion repairability. They had a reason for it, but could've chosen to not create more throwaway things.

trenchpilgrim•2h ago

The 128GB version wouldn't be throwaway, since that's the maximum the platform as a whole supports anyway- more memory than that would require a new mainboard and CPU at the same time.

nemomarx•1h ago

Not for upgrade reasons but what if you have a fault in one of the dimms or etc? Now you can't just drop in a replacement without changing everything.

cyanydeez•1h ago

it's basically the same as asking what happens when your M4 Apple has a fault. It's soldered based on the desire to use the ram as part of the GPU.

Without that, it's really not a interesting solution.

demanding replaceable ram means also not wanting the benefits of the integrated memory

beeflet•1h ago

the platform should support more memory

richardw•1h ago

That applies to all computers when you buy the fully specced versions on day 1. A maxxed out iPad isn’t throwaway, but framework represents a higher standard of upgradability.

epistasis•1h ago

I have been continuously baffled by the people that think that soldered on RAM is somehow "throwaway". My last desktop build is eight years old and I have never upgraded the ram. Never will. My next build will have an entirely new motherboard, ram, and GPU, and the last set will end up at the ewaste recycler, because who could I find that wants that old hardware?

Soldered RAM, CPU, and GPU, that give space benefits and performance benefits is exactly what I want, and results in no more ewaste at all. In fact less ewaste, because if I had a smaller form factor I could justify keeping the older computer around for longer. The size of the thing is a bigger cause of waste for me than the ability to upgrade RAM.

Not everybody upgrades RAM, and those people deserve computers too. Framework's brand appears to be offering something that other suppliers are not, rather than expand ability. That's a much better brand and niche overall.

onli•1h ago

> Not everybody upgrades RAM, and those people deserve computers too.

No. It's end of the line with consumerism and we either start repairing and recycling or we die. Framework catered to people who agree with that, and this product is not in line.

I have no idea why you would not upgrade your memory, I have done so in all PCs I ever owned and all laptops, and it's a very common (and cheap) upgrade. It reduces waste because people can then use their system longer, which means less garbage over the lifetime of a person. And as was already commented, it is not only about upgrades, but also about repairs. Ram breaks rather often.

epistasis•1h ago

I have had the system for eight years and at no point would upgrading RAM have increased performance.

Upgrading the RAM would have created more waste than properly sizing the RAM to COU proportion from the beginning.

It is very odd to encounter someone who has such a narrow view of computing that they cannot imagine someone not upgrading their RAM.

I have not once, literally not once have RAM break either. I have been part of the management of clusters of hundreds of compute nodes, that would occasionally each have their failures, but not once was RAM the cause of failure. I'm fairly shocked to hear that anybody's RAM has failed, honestly, unless it's been overlocked or something else.

onli•37m ago

> It is very odd to encounter someone who has such a narrow view of computing that they cannot imagine someone not upgrading their RAM.

Uncalled for and means the end of the discussion after this reaction. Ofc I can imagine that, it's just usually a dumb decision.

That you did not have to upgrade the ram means one of two things: You either had completely linear workloads, so unlike me did not switch to a compiled programming language or experimented with local LLMs etc. Or you bought a lot of ram in the beginning, so 8 years ago with a hefty premium.

Changes nothing about the fundamental disagreement with the existence of such machines. Especially from a company that knows better. I do not expect ethical behaviour from a bottom of the barrel company like Apple, but it was completely reasonable to expect better from framework.

v5v3•1h ago

>I have been continuously baffled by the people that think that soldered on RAM is somehow "throwaway"

One of the primary objections to soldered RAM was/is the cost to purchase. As the likes of Apple priced Ram upgrade at a hefty premium to retail prices.

epistasis•57m ago

I can see that objection too, and it seems far more reasonable than assuming that soldered RAM automatically means a reduced lifespan machine.

But are Framework's RAM prices unreasonable? $400 for 64GB more of LPDDR5x seems OK. I haven't seen anybody object to Framework's RAM on those grounds.

beeflet•31m ago

With modular RAM, someone can buy old boards and RAM and use it for high-RAM applications down the line.

linotype•1h ago

The only part I’ve ever had not fail on a PC or Laptop is RAM.

beeflet•1h ago

Why not make a platform with a greater number of channels

aDyslecticCrow•1h ago

That's a question for AMD and TCMC. They only have so much space on the silica. More memory channels means less of something else. This is not a "framework platform" issue, it's the specification of that CPU.

beeflet•1h ago

Well they chose to use this hardware platform. It all sounds like market segmentation to me, now that AMD is on top.

wmf•1h ago

To be clear, AMD is giving you 2x the bandwidth of competing chips and you're complaining that it isn't 4x.

beeflet•47m ago

My complaints are the maximum RAM of the system and the modularity of the RAM.

With an increased number of channels, you could have a greater amount of RAM at a lower frequency but at the same bandwidth. So you would at least be able to run some of these much larger AI models.

v5v3•1h ago

Risk cannabalising sales from their other products?

For example Nvidia seek to ban consumer GPU use in datacenters as they to sell datacentre GPUs.

If they made consumer platforms that can take 1tb of ram etc, then people may choose to not buy EYPC.

Afterall many cloud providers already offer Ryzen VPS's.

beeflet•28m ago

my thoughts exactly

undersuit•53m ago

I wonder if there were similar complaints when cache moved from motherboards to soldered on the cpu package.

beeflet•36m ago

The difference in performance between DRAM and flash memory is far greater than SRAM and DRAM. The total RAM of a system is a hard limit on the type of programs you can practically run because swapping is slow.

antonvs•2h ago

> And even more curious

It's easy to find out the reason for this. And the article's benchmarks confirm the validity of this reason. Why comment from a place of ignorance, unless you're asking a question?

aniviacat•1h ago

Your comment is unnecessarily hostile.

There are plenty of components to choose from which do not need soldered-on RAM. Giving up modularity to gain access to higher memory bandwidth is certainly a trafeoff many are willing to make, but to take that tradeoff as a company known for modularity is, as the parent comment put it, curious.

antonvs•53m ago

Every single description of the Framework desktop that I've seen has addressed this issue. To comment as though it's some sort of mystery is disingenuous at best. My comment was precisely as friendly as the commenter deserved.

And as I said, if you read the article, you'll see that the tradeoff in question has paid off very well.

suspended_state•2h ago

> They soldered on the RAM. Which makes it a very strange entry for a brand marketing itself as the DIY dream

This was also my first thought when discovering this new model, but I think it was a pragmatic design decision.

The questions you should ask yourself are:

- which upgradable memory module format could be used with the same speed and bandwidth as the soldered in solution,

- if this solution exists, how much would it cost

- what's the maximum supported amount of ram for this CPU

beeflet•1h ago

>which upgradable memory module format could be used with the same speed and bandwidth as the soldered in solution

CAMM perhaps? The modular memory is important, because they are selling them to two different markets: gamers that want a small powerful desktop, and people running LLMs at home. The modularity of the RAM allows you to convert the former into the latter at a later date, so it seems pretty critical to me.

For this reason alone, I am going to buy a used epyc server instead of one of these desktop things. I will be able to equip it with a greater amount of RAM as I see fit and run a greater range of models (albeit at lower speed). The ability to run larger models slowly at a later date is more important than the ability for me to run smaller models faster now. So I am an example of a consumer who does not like framework's tradeoff.

You would think that they would at least offer some type of service where they take it into the factory and refit it with new ram chips. Perhaps they could just buy used low-ram boards at a later date and use them to make refurbished high-ram boards.

Another solution is to make it so that it supports both soldered and unsoldered ram (but at a lower frequency). Gaming is frequency-limited but does not require much ram, but a lot of workloads like AI are bandwidth limited. Hell, if you're going to have some high-frequency RAM irreplacibly soldered to the motherboard, it might as well be a chiplet!

trenchpilgrim•2h ago

The CEO mentioned in an LTT video that they worked with AMD to try to make CAMM memory work and hit some technical problems.

bluescrn•1h ago

Gotta chase that AI bubble at any cost

jeroenhd•1h ago

According to the Framework CEO on the Linus Tech Tips video about this thing [1], they tried and AMD assigned an engineer on getting modular memory to work and decided it's not possible.

Unless there's another company out there shipping this CPU with replaceable memory, I'll believe them. Even with LPCAMM, physics just doesn't work out.

Of course, there are plenty of slower desktops you can buy where all the memory can be swapped out. If you want a repairable desktop like that, you're not stuck with Framework in the same way you would be with laptops. You'll probably struggle to get the same memory bandwidth to make full use of AMD's chips, though.

[1]: https://youtu.be/-lErGZZgUbY?feature=shared&t=446

cyanydeez•1h ago

there isn't. This thing was designed the same way apple designed their unified memory. This thing is meant to work hand in hand with it's iGPU.

tgma•1h ago

Even on regular AMD 7000 and 9000 series the DDR5 memory controller is very sensitive and hard to get a stable system with fast RAM on many motherboards when all 4 modules are present. At today's RAM speeds, I definitely think a stable soldered system is increasingly a better trade-off.

pzmarzly•2h ago

HN admins: can the domain extractor be changed to say "world.hey.com/dhh" here instead of just the domain name? From what I see, Hey World is a blogging platform, similar to Medium but markdown and email based. And the username (blog name) is in the second part of the URL.

mtmail•1h ago

Best to email the moderators (link in footer). I've made similar suggestions about other blogging platforms and got a positive reply.

ahmedfromtunis•2h ago

It fun to see that, in an era where most CEOs are all-in with AI both on a personal level and at their companies, dhh chose to rather take a deep dive into the world of linux and config files and indie computer brands.

Curious what will the long term impact of this be on the longtime viability of Basecamp and its sister/daughter brands.

OrvalWintermute•2h ago

very impressive...

Max+ 395 specced with: 128GB of non-upgradeable LPDDR5x WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe - M.2 2280 - 8TB Noctua fan 3x + 3x extra USB-A & USB-C ports No OS option.

only $2,776.00!!!

micromacrofoot•1h ago

everything's cheap when you're rich

OrvalWintermute•1h ago

A mac studio configured similarly With 128 GB of memory and an 8 TB SSD is $5799

mft_•1h ago

One detail is that the memory bandwidth on the M4 Max and M3 Ultra (especially) is considerably higher than the 395+.

jeroenhd•1h ago

The Mac Studio (at least the M3 Ultra model) blows the Framework out of the water when it comes to AI performance, though, at least according to this (Dutch language) benchmark: https://tweakers.net/reviews/13614/framework-desktop-de-fram...

Paying twice the price for twice to seven times the performance may not be such a bad thing. Then again, with Apple you're kind of stuck with macOS and the like, so Framework may still be the better option depending on your use case.

everfrustrated•1h ago

Bear in mind the gpu has access to all of that 128GB as well, so for AI thats very very cheap.

cyanydeez•1h ago

yeah, slap the Apple brand on this and it's basically the same thing.

People seem to really not understand the limits of wanting unified memory architecture.

ashleyn•2h ago

How is AMD GPU compatibility with leading generative AI workflows? I'm under the impression everything is CUDA.

wolfgangK•2h ago

Indeed, recent Flash Attention is a pain point for non CUDA.

trenchpilgrim•2h ago

Certain chips can work with useful local models, but compatibility is far behind CUDA.

pja•1h ago

llama.cpp combined with Mesa’s Vulkan support for AMD GPUs has worked pretty well with everything I’ve thrown it at.

throwdbaaway•1h ago

https://llm-tracker.info/_TOORG/Strix-Halo has very comprehensive test results for running llama.cpp with Strix Halo. This one is particularly interesting:

> But when we switch to longer context, we see something interesting happen. WMMA + FA basically loses no performance at this longer context length!

> Vulkan + FA still has better pp but tg is significantly lower. More data points would be better, but seems like Vulkan performance may continue to decrease as context extends while the HIP+rocWMMA backend should perform better.

lhl has also been sharing these test results in https://forum.level1techs.com/t/strix-halo-ryzen-ai-max-395-..., and his latest comment provides a great summary of the current state:

> (What is bad is that basically every single model has a different optimal backend, and most of them have different optimal backends for pp (handling context) vs tg (new text)).

Anyway, for me, the greatest thing about the Strix Halo + llama.cpp combo is that we can throw one or more egpu into the mix, as echoed by level1tech video (https://youtu.be/ziZDzrDI7AM?t=485), which should help a lot with PP performance.

kristianp•2h ago

> There's at least a little flexibility with the graphics card if you move the board into a different case—there's a single PCIe x4 slot on the board that you could put an external GPU into, though many PCIe x16 graphics cards will be bandwidth starved.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/review-framework-des...

conradev•1h ago

You can also use an adapter to repurpose an M.2 slot as PCIe x16, but the bandwidth is the same x4

tgma•1h ago

That's just called a PCIe x4 [1]. Each PCIe lane is an independent channel. The wider slot will simply have disconnected pins. You can actually do this with regular motherboard PCIe x4 slots by cutting the plastic at the end of the slot so you can insert a wider card and most cards work just fine.

[1]: It sounds like a nitpick but a PCIe x16 with x4 effective bandwidth can exist and is a different thing: if the actual PCIe interface is x16, but there is an upstream bottleneck (e.g. aggregate bandwidth from chipset to CPU is not enough to handle all peripherals at once at full rate.)

wolfgangK•1h ago

For LLM inference, I don't think the PCIe bandwidth matters much and a GPU could improve greatly the prompt processing speed.

ElectricalUnion•1h ago

Only if your entire model fits the GPU VRAM.

To me this reads like "if you can afford those 256GB VRAM GPUs, you don't need PCIe bandwidth!"

jgalt212•1h ago

Yeah, I think so. Once the whole model is on the GPU (potentially slower start-up), there really isn't much traffic between the GPU and the motherboard. That's how I think about it. But mostly saying this as I'm interested in being corrected if I'm wrong.

monster_truck•1h ago

There are no situations where this matters yet. You have to drop down to an 8x slot on PCIe 3.0 to even begin to see any meaningful impact on benchmarks (synthetic or otherwise)

chvid•1h ago

What is it with this guy and his bogus anti Apple benchmark?

micromacrofoot•1h ago

he's mad they take a cut of his app store subscriptions, this is a huge saga that's been spanning years for him

(not sure why I'm being downvoted, it's true... https://x.com/dhh/status/1747697778455962014)

linotype•1h ago

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. He’s also the guy that inflicted Ruby on Rails upon us.

TheRealDunkirk•1h ago

Sorry, but what's "bogus" about benchmarking your specific workloads? What benchmark do you think he should have run?

Rohansi•1h ago

One more that favors Apple, obviously. 2/3 of the benchmarks having Apple Silicon on top is not enough!

OrvalWintermute•1h ago

I don’t know about pro or anti Apple, but the framework optional 8TB NVME SSD is only +$699 whereas Apple charges $2200 for a similar 8TB NVME SSD

dlivingston•1h ago

Context on DHH vs. Apple: https://youtu.be/mzDi8u3WMj0

I find myself agreeing with much of what he says. The Apple of today is not the same as the Apple of 15 years ago.

beeflet•1h ago

is the apple fief facing resistance? I was under the impression that Epic v. Apple was a nothingburger

andrepd•1h ago

What could you possibly be talking about? The only benchmark I see in the article where Apple M4 isn't near the top is the rails test suite.

dustingetz•1h ago

for $2k that is a lot of computer

Xenoamorphous•1h ago

Oh, to be young again and care about benchmarks, bogomips and stuff like that.

beeflet•1h ago

Do you even bench, mark?

Terr_•1h ago

Or to generally be back in the era where such a thing would be useful for LAN-parties...

TiredOfLife•1h ago

Note that the main benchmark in the post is practical. How long a test suite for the product he makes runs.

ThinkBeat•1h ago

Reads like an advertisement to me.

coolgoose•1h ago

I doubt that Dhh if all people would do advertisement (as paid) for this. He genuinely seems to enjoy his macos break

echelon•1h ago

Apple's walled garden and mob tactics pissed DHH off [1-3]. Of course he's going to advocate for alternatives.

Tim Sweeney is in the same camp.

[1] https://www.hey.com/apple/

[2] https://world.hey.com/dhh/apple-rejects-the-hey-calendar-fro...

[3] https://world.hey.com/dhh/hey-is-finally-for-sale-on-the-iph...

jamesgill•1h ago

I like Framework and own one of their laptops. But the desktop seems more a triumph of gimmicky marketing than a desktop that's meaningfully different. And, it seems significantly overpriced.

zozbot234•1h ago

It's taking a newly released mobile- and mini-PC-focused platform that's usually paired with proprietary technology, and building something that's as close as possible to a standard desktop with it. Seems very much in the Framework spirit once you account for that side of it.

damonll•1h ago

You need to use Orbstack as the engine on Mac, otherwise it's not a fair fight. It's at least 2x as fast as Docker

fmajid•59m ago

I cancelled my Frameword Desktop order and ordered a HP Z2 Mini G1a instead, the goal being to replace my Mac Studio as I've had it with Apple's arrogance and lousy software quality. The HP is much smaller, has ECC RAM and 10G Ethernet. Significantly more expensive, however.

mixmastamyk•14m ago

Was scoffing at HP, but then you got my attention with ECC RAM. Looks nice as well.

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