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?
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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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.
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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?
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Lmao the news about this desktop is strangling their website to the point of needing a 45 minute waiting list
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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.
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 This pc will be outdated before you really need to upgrade the ram to play new games.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.
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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.
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.
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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?
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