Framework Moves Into Desktops, 2-In-1 Laptops (tomshardware.com) 57
At its "Second Gen" event today, Framework detailed three new computers: an updated Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300, a 4.5-liter Mini-ITX desktop powered by Ryzen AI Max, and a colorful, convertible Framework Laptop 12 designed with students in mind. The latter is defined by Framework as a "defining product." Tom's Hardware reports: Framework Desktop: The Framework Desktop is a 4.5L Mini-ITX machine using AMD's Ryzen AI Max "Strix Halo" chips with Radeon 8060S graphics. While this is a mobile chip, Framework says putting it in a desktop chassis gets it to 120W sustained power and 140W boost "while staying quiet and cool." Framework says this should allow 1440p gaming on intense titles, as well as workstation-class projects and local AI. [...] The base model, with a Ryzen AI Max 385 and 32GB of RAM, starts at $1,099, while the top-end machine with a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 128GB of RAM begins at $1,999. Framework is only doing "DIY" editions here, so you'll have to get your own storage drive and bring your own operating system (the company is calling it "the easiest PC you'll ever build"). The mainboard on its own will be available from $799. Pre-orders are open now, and Framework expects to ship sometime in Q3.
Framework Laptop 12: The Laptop 12 is designed to bring the flexibility from the Laptop 12 but make it smaller, cheaper, and in more colors (with an optional stylus to match). These machines are made of ABS plastic molded in thermoplastic polyurethane, all around a metal frame. Framework says that it's "our easiest product ever to repair," but that more information on that will come closer to its launch in mid-2025. I'm really looking forward to this repair guide. It comes in five colorways: lavender, sage, gray, black, and bubblegum. The laptop will come with 13th Gen Intel Core i3 and i5 processors, which aren't the latest, but better than entry-level junk. You'll get up to 48GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and Wi-Fi 6E. It has a 1920 x 1200 touch screen that the company claims will surpass 400 nits of brightness. There's no pricing information yet, and Framework says there's more to share on pricing and specs later in the year. Pre-orders will open in April ahead of the mid-year launch.
Framework Laptop 13: The Framework Laptop 13 is getting a significant refresh with AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series. It doesn't look all that different on the outside, with a 13.5-inch design that largely resembles the one from way back in 2021. But there are new features. Beyond the processors, the Framework Laptop 3 is getting bumped up to Wi-Fi 7 and is getting a new thermal system, a "next-generation" keyboard, and new colorways for the Expansion Cards and bezels (though I still don't know why you would want a bezel in anything other than black). [...] The new Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 starts at $899 for a DIY Edition without storage or an OS, and $1,099 for a pre-built model. If you're buying the mainboard to put in an old system, that's $449. (Framework is keeping the Ryzen 7040 systems around starting at $749). No word for now on any new Intel models.
Framework Laptop 12: The Laptop 12 is designed to bring the flexibility from the Laptop 12 but make it smaller, cheaper, and in more colors (with an optional stylus to match). These machines are made of ABS plastic molded in thermoplastic polyurethane, all around a metal frame. Framework says that it's "our easiest product ever to repair," but that more information on that will come closer to its launch in mid-2025. I'm really looking forward to this repair guide. It comes in five colorways: lavender, sage, gray, black, and bubblegum. The laptop will come with 13th Gen Intel Core i3 and i5 processors, which aren't the latest, but better than entry-level junk. You'll get up to 48GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and Wi-Fi 6E. It has a 1920 x 1200 touch screen that the company claims will surpass 400 nits of brightness. There's no pricing information yet, and Framework says there's more to share on pricing and specs later in the year. Pre-orders will open in April ahead of the mid-year launch.
Framework Laptop 13: The Framework Laptop 13 is getting a significant refresh with AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series. It doesn't look all that different on the outside, with a 13.5-inch design that largely resembles the one from way back in 2021. But there are new features. Beyond the processors, the Framework Laptop 3 is getting bumped up to Wi-Fi 7 and is getting a new thermal system, a "next-generation" keyboard, and new colorways for the Expansion Cards and bezels (though I still don't know why you would want a bezel in anything other than black). [...] The new Framework Laptop 13 with AMD Ryzen AI 300 starts at $899 for a DIY Edition without storage or an OS, and $1,099 for a pre-built model. If you're buying the mainboard to put in an old system, that's $449. (Framework is keeping the Ryzen 7040 systems around starting at $749). No word for now on any new Intel models.
Slashdotted (Score:2)
frame.work website got slashdotted!
I love Framework (Score:1)
I don't need a new desktop.
But there's something about modularity that makes me feel funny in my peepee.
Want want want !
Re: (Score:3)
Have they fixed all the issues yet? Power drain, limits on modularity (certain modules can go in certain slots without triggering aforementioned power drain), weird firmware issues, bad layout on the coin cell holder causing people to rip it off (solder pads and all) when trying to replace the RTC battery...?
I'm all for releasing new mainboards with all the new tech, but it would be great if their sustainable laptop concept could be, well, sustainable... WITHOUT having to replace the entire core of the mach
Re: I love Framework (Score:2)
Unless you want a desktop with upgradeable RAM. They've soldered the ram to the main board. C'mon, framework, what the fuck?
Desktop? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Desktop? (Score:3)
I was disappointed to see the soldered RAM, but the fact that it's a standard mini-ITX form factor means that you can use their motherboard in other cases if you care about the power supply being non-standard, or other motherboards in their case if you care about the soldered RAM.
Most of the desktops that I use these days are the "1 liter" PCs, such as the Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny, but those are 100% proprietary parts other than the RAM and SSD. If I had a place where I needed a more powerful system and wasn
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if this is their shtick, but I'm often intrigued when I look at their laptops (eg. when I see a story about them), but I've got several I rarely use. It's often made me look to see what their desktops look like, and then I'm shocked they have none at all. If I were into their laptops, I'd be even more interested in their take on a desktop - I'd rather not have to shop around for yet another vendor and hope for one that supports Linux well to boot.
Re: Desktop? (Score:4, Informative)
> Sure, but what do they add to the mix that you can't get by building your own 4.3L mini-itx desktop or buying someone else's 4.3L mini-itx desktop?
128GB of VRAM for $2000 USD. That's why it's soldered, they even tested it with LPCAMM and the signal integrity just wasn't there. There are no other options on the market that have that much unified memory for that price. nVidia wants $3000 for their equivalent, Apple wants $4800 for theirs.
Re: (Score:2)
128GB of VRAM
Not quite. The memory architecture is not unified, it's partitioned.
I believe the max you have have is 96GB- and then your OS gets 32GB.
You also don't want to compare a Strix Halo against a $5000 Apple.
An M4 Max lays waste to this thing in literally every metric- CPU, GPU, power usage.
And you can actually use >96GB on your Apple, which is important if you want to use flash attention and larger batch sizes on your 70b (or 34b FP16) models
This is amazing for a PC- but you can't directly price compar
Re: (Score:2)
96GB in Windows, higher in Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm looking and I can't find any evidence of that.
That would be a large change from how even Strix Point's "Dedicated/Shared VRAM" partitioning worked, even in linux.
Re: (Score:2)
This is the first time I've seen this... When did we start measuring desktop case sizes in liters? Maybe I've jumped from a different timeline where this wasn't the case.
Re: (Score:3)
The first I ever saw measuring in liters was the rise of the "1-liter PC" like the aforementioned Lenovo ThinkCentre "Tiny" series, the HP Elite "Mini" series, the Dell Optiplex "Micro" series, the Intel "NUC" series, etc. ServeTheHome has a great series of articles about this form factor, which they call "Project TinyMiniMicro".
Companies have been specifying chassis volume in liters for smaller desktop PCs for many years (doing a quick search found references 10 years ago), since it's an easy way to compar
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the info. As an American, perhaps I'll start measuring my computers in gallons.
Re: (Score:2)
Since the 128GB VRAM hints at this machine's true niche, I think that measuring computer performance in TOPS/gallon is perfectly cromulent for comparison purposes.
Re: (Score:2)
The memory architecture of AMD parts is not unified, it's partitioned.
The largest supported partition for this part is 96GB/32GB.
Re: (Score:2)
96GB.
The memory architecture of AMD parts is not unified, it's partitioned.
The largest supported partition for this part is 96GB/32GB.
Yes, I wasn't precise about the RAM usage - in Windows it's limited to 96GB for VRAM, more in Linux. I thought I saw 110 for the latter reported somewhere, but can't find it now.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I wasn't precise about the RAM usage - in Windows it's limited to 96GB for VRAM, more in Linux. I thought I saw 110 for the latter reported somewhere, but can't find it now.
Ya, I've heard that as well. Someone even provided a link saying it...
But I'm not sure I believe it.
The current amdgpu drivers can't do this, and I don't know how they'd be able to.
I suspect it's actually more along the lines of 96GB partition + another 14GB of "shared RAM", which is CPU RAM that the iGPU must access via the CPU- i.e., considerably slower.
Anyway, the correction came because you specifically said VRAM. There is a surprisingly large difference between 96GB of VRAM and 128GB of VRAM in t
Re: Desktop? (Score:2)
We already measure hats in gallons, why not PCs, too?
Re: (Score:2)
Or I could just buy a mini-ITX motherboard, CPU, RAM, and mini-ITX chassis and not have to throw away any of their crap that isn't suitable.
Why are we acting like they're the only one that makes mini-ITX stuff?
Re: (Score:2)
Why are we acting like they're the only one that makes mini-ITX stuff?
Who is saying that? Not the comment you replied to:
... you can use their motherboard in other cases if you care about the power supply being non-standard, or other motherboards in their case if you care about the soldered RAM.
---
Or I could just buy a mini-ITX motherboard, CPU, RAM, and mini-ITX chassis and not have to throw away any of their crap that isn't suitable.
Right now, this looks like it should be one of the most powerful mini-ITX boards that I can find on the market. I suspect MINISFORUM and others will have similar boards available soon, but right now they don't.
The whole point of Framework is that they make it very easy to buy exactly the parts you need. If you want specific parts, they will be available in the marketplace later in the year, and you can buy exactly which ones you want. If you don't want a
Re:Desktop? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Desktop? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Intriguing!
I have no particular need to run huge models but I'm fucking sick to the back teeth oh Nvidia Jetson machines. This might provide something with decent inference performance in a reasonable power envelope and package which would be nice. I hope they haven't AMD'd it too thoroughly and it actually you know works with out infinite suffering and despair.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll check out the video when I get to a computer (as much as I hate to give LTT any views) but am surprised they didn't do LPCAMM2 which arrived on the scene in the last couple of quarters just for this purpose
https://www.ifixit.com/News/95... [ifixit.com]
will be interesting to see why it wasn't suitable here
Re: (Score:3)
It's for performance reasons, which means they're really pushing the timings to the limits of what the specifications, or likely the actual chips can do.
If you use RAM modules, whether using DIMMs or LPCAMM2, there will have to be some "slop" in the timings because things like connectors add a whole pile of degradation to the signals. These signals are running at several GHz and in parallel, so the timings of all the signals is in fractions of a nanosecond. Go through a connector and it's going to throw tha
Re: (Score:2)
What makes it special is that the soldered RAM is also VRAM, and none of those other mini ITX boards will get you 128GB of VRAM, even with a discrete GPU, for anything remotely close to the price point.
Re: (Score:2)
and none of those other mini ITX boards will get you 128GB of VRAM
Neither will this one.
Largest partition it can do is 96GB/32GB.
Re: (Score:2)
That 96GB limit only applies in Windows. In Linux, you can override that and go higher.
Re: (Score:2)
You have a citation for that?
The partitioning on AMDs isn't infinitely flexible- and have (for as long as I could remember) been hardware limited to 75% allocation to the GPU.
I have looked around a bit and can't find any examples of Linux breaking that barrier.
Re: (Score:2)
https://frame.work/ca/en/deskt... [frame.work]
Scroll down to "key specs". They list 96GB of VRAM, with an asterisk ,that says "* In Windows. In Linux you can override the VRAM setting to go higher."
News coverage of the Framework Desktop explicitly states a 110GB VRAM limit for Linux, but I can't find that specific number anywhere on Framework's own site, or any source other than the various news reports simply including that number, Framework's own site just says "higher" than 96GB. However, since the 110GB number is wi
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing on the internet knows how to do this- and certainly not the amdgpu driver.
Will be interesting to see what they're talking about.
110GB would be just enough to run a 70b (q8_0) or 34b (fp16/bf16) model with all the bells and whistles needed to make it useful for coding, and that make performance reasonable on these smaller GPUs.
If indeed this ends up being true, I will be buying one.
Re: (Score:2)
Watched the video and read some general other comments around and there's basically no info.
Your statements about the challenges in general are on point in general, but they are the reason why CAMM2 was developed. There's no indication that AMD's memory access is LPDDR5x to any limits that LPCAMM2 can't handle. (see e.g. this article https://old.chipsandcheese.com... [chipsandcheese.com] that, i only partly understand about the chip's design. )
Now... i'm at least moderately confident that Framework pushed AMD on the issue
Re: (Score:2)
I mean to each their own. I still don't understand what people have against LTT.
Re: (Score:2)
He is from Canada, may be the icing on the ca
Re: (Score:2)
Basically the Signal to Noise ratio of his channel's output is low.
He positions it as real tech channel, but it's more often slipshod broish buffoonery and hot takes wrapped in clickbaity packages. I've always WANTED to like their stuff, and i like that e.g. he invested in Framework, but whenever i watch it like 4 out of 5 times it's a disappointment and then i don't click on any for months to quarters until i get baited again, watch a few... roll my eyes and the cycle repeats itself.
Benchmarking and test
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Desktop? Use LPCAMM2 for the LPDDR5 (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The idea that you can run a 70b LLM comfortably for under $2500 all in
Kinda.
I'm using 110GB with flash attention, 1024 token batch size, and 128k context window.
You can only do 96GB with Strix Halo.
For smaller models, you'll do well, but I estimate you won't get more than 3t/s or so on this thing with a 70b model.
Re: (Score:3)
Partly it's so you can take old framework components that you upgraded in your laptop and use them in a desktop form factor for a variety of purposes, such as linux home lab server. This has been something requested by framework customers for a long time.
Re: (Score:2)
They've gotten really cheap lately though and
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure what the play is there. The initial reason for framework to exist is to improve on the abysmal modularity/upgradeability of laptop hardware. Desktop hardware is already modular and upgradeable. Not only that but they ended up soldering the memory to the motherboard and using a "semi custom" power supply. I assume they have a target demographic in mind. I just can't imagine who it is.
Same here. I can build a PC to my spec and include plans for future upgrades. I can’t see a good reason to go with Framweork over rolling my own if I want a DIY solution.
From TFS: (Score:3)
" The Laptop 12 is designed to bring the flexibility from the Laptop 12 but make it smaller, cheaper, and in more colors (with an optional stylus to match)"
My brain got in an infinite recursive loop trying to parse that.
Strix Halo (Score:2)
That 395+ machine with 128GB will be great, but damn that ship date kinda sucks.
Keyboards (Score:2)
Please, Framework, PLEASE! (Score:2)
I SO want one of their laptops; sadly, the lack of a Trackpoint is a deal-breaker for me. It seems that I'm far from alone in this:
https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=%22framework%22+%22trackpoint%22&atb=v343-1&ia=web
Re: (Score:2)
That, and the original 7-row Thinkpad keyboard. With the island of home/end/pgup/pgdown at top-right corner.
I'm still using Thinkpad T25 (the 25th Anniversary edition - last Thinkpad with 7-row keyboard) as a daily driver because it has that.
But why? (Score:2)
The *point* of Framework was a customizable, roll-your-own laptop with upgradeable parts so when one thing became obsolete, you didn't need to buy a whole new laptop, just that bit.
Clever idea, seemed generally interesting and I came very close to buying one as my next work laptop but their premium was just too high for a benefit I'm not entirely convinced is going to be meaningful. Genuinely, their approach to ports was absolutely brilliant.
But I applaud them trying to break the paradigm.
I don't understan
Re: (Score:2)
This is an AI powerhouse for around 2k bucks. It exists because it's awesome and nobody else does it.
Also how is "Their original point was X... now that they are an established company, I am surprised they're branching out..." an argument? No healthy company produces just one product.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't understand that people buy Mac minis or Intel nucs or other tiny computers? Also when you upgrade your framework laptop, it's nice to be and to use the old parts to make a tiny home lab server. This has been requested by framework customers for a long time.
Sigh. (Score:2)
I don't want a smaller laptop.
I want a bigger one.
And I want GPU options. More than one of them.
I hate to gut the idea, because I love the concept, but a £2000 desktop I can get anywhere (much cheaper!) and a 12" laptop is a toy.
I want Laptop 19, or at least 17. Something you can still carry around but which you can actually see the damn resolution you paid for.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
My gaming laptop is 6 years old and is maxed out to 64GB RAM with an RTX card in it and barely cost that.
Sorry, but a desktop with 128GB RAM is NOTHING... and the fact that you try to compare it to an Apple Mac is telling in itself.
The most expensive component in that machine is the GPU. So... maybe more modular GPU options?
Re: (Score:1)
Tell me you don't know what you're talking about without actually saying it.
That 128gb of RAM is assignable up to 96gb of VRAM in windows and I've heard rumors of up to 110gb in linux. There are 3 products I'm aware of that are comparable-
Apple Mac Studio 128gb ram - $4800
Nvidia Digits - $3000 MSRP, not yet shipping as far as I know
HP Z2 Mini G1a - "Coming soon", no pricing info available
It's fine if it's not for you, but you're simply wrong if you think your 6 year old laptop or any current traditional des
Re: (Score:1)