On 25th February 2025 there was Frameworks (2nd Gen) event showcasing new products coming soon, including an entire new product line, the Framework Desktop.
We then introduced our next new product category, the Framework Desktop. Pre-orders are open now on this as well, starting at $1099, with shipments starting in early Q3. This is a tiny, 4.5L machine with massive performance inside using AMD’s new Ryzen AI Max processors. These bring up to 16 CPU cores, up to 128GB of memory shared across CPU, GPU, and NPU, discrete-level graphics performance. This makes it an awesome gaming, workstation, and AI crunching machine, all in an unassuming little form factor that you can carry with you. We also followed PC standards everywhere we could: the Mainboard is a MiniITX form factor, so you can drop it into your preferred case. This is just an amazing machine, and we can’t wait for you to try it.
I’ve been out of the custom PC game for a while, but this seems like it’ll be awfully pricey to get a certified Pimp Master Nasty machine. I think I’ll definitely wait to hear some real world reviews of how everything works out after the first bunch of units are sold.
But this is exciting as hell! I really like that Framework is bringing their hyper-customization and configuration sensibilities to the desktop. Being able to swap out ports and storage and stuff without having to dig around in the internal hardware is pretty amazing.
There is one place we did have to step away from PC norms though, which is on memory. To enable the massive 256GB/s memory bandwidth that Ryzen AI Max delivers, the LPDDR5x is soldered. 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.
So, they tried finding a solution at least and made pricing adjustments regarding that.
Of course, still going against their ethos, but considering the other devices in their line-up still have everything replacable, this is fair.
And maybe technology gets better for them to make non-soldered RAM in the next iteration (if they keep producing it, that is)
machine. I think I’ll definitely wait to hear some real world reviews of how everything works out after the first bunch of units are sold.
