Framework, the company that is best known for its modular, repairable laptops, just released its first desktop computer. It is a small desktop computer that punches over its weight.
The most interesting part is what is inside the device. The frame is one of the first companies to use recently announced architecture of AMD, Strix Halo, also known as Ryzen AI Max processors. It is a comprehensive processing unit that promises a serious performance.
In other words, Framework has just designed a PC for two types of clients: people looking for an extremely small game computer, or people who want to run large language models on their computers.
From the outside, the desktop of the frame looks more like a toy than a serious computer. Is a small 4.5l computer built around a mini-ItX board, which makes it smaller than a Playstation 5 or Xbox Series X.
There is a personal standing panel with 21 interchangeable plastic square tiles. When buying a desktop frame on the company’s website, you can choose tile colors and patterns to create your own front panel.
In addition to the usual ports you usually get with a mini-ItX table, you will find iconic frame expansion cards at the end of the device-to-front, and two in the back. You can choose between a wide range of modules, such as USB-C or USB-A ports, a headphone outlet, a SD card reader, or even an expansion card.
The internals are quite simple: it has the main table with the accelerated AMD processing unit, a fan, a heat sink, a power supply and two SSD M.2 2280 NVME for storage.
Strix Halo APU of AMD is joined in the main table. Frame offers two different configurations-AMD Ryzen AI max 385, and AMD Ryzen AI max+ 395. High configuration comes with 16 cores CPU, 40 graphic nuclei and 80MB cache, while entry level configuration comes with 8 core CPUs, 32 cores graphic and 40MB cache.
But where is Dash? This will certainly be the most divisive design choice as the frame offers 32 GB to 128 GB of joined RAM. You will not be able to buy more RAM or update it on the road.
“There is a place we need to leave PC rates, which is in memory. To enable the width of the massive memory gang 256 GB/S that Ryzen AI Max, LPDDR5X has joined,” wrote the General Director of Framework Nirav Patel on the company’s blog.
“We have spent months working with AMD to explore ways about it, but ultimately we determined that it was not technically possible to lower the modular memory to the top with the 256-bit memory bus,” he added.
However, having up to 128 GB of unified memory unlocks many opportunities when it comes to large linguistic models. Llama 3.3 70b can operate without any hiccup using Ollama, Llama.CPP and other open source tools for the local work loads of it.
Other open -weight models from my mistroral, nous, hermes or deepseek should also work well. The frame also sells the main table without a case. For example, the company has built a mini-raft with four desktop frames that operate in parallel for the testing of it.
The base desktop model starts at $ 1,099, while the high -level version costs $ 1,999. Like other frame computers, the company promises support for Windows, as well as popular Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, Fedora, or its cousin focused on basic games.
Pre-porches are open now, but deliveries will only begin at the beginning of Q3 2025.
