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.
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.
If you can't find an sufficiently similar alternative that is priced at a much better price, it is not overpriced.
I am very on board with the framework mission. I can afford the premium just to keep their lights on and doors open. The other Chinese OEMs almost certainly won’t offer quite the support for that ~10% discount…
I guess the original Raspberry Pi team missed the memo on that.
For the purposes of running LLM models, a Mac Mini. The PC is cheaper, but it doesn't have MacOS, Apple's service or resale value.
Actually the pricing is pretty similar.
Framework Desktop price with default selections, 32GB of RAM, 500 GB storage: $1,242.00 USD
Mac Mini with 32GB of RAM, 512 GB storage: $1,199.00
Post changed a bit since I started replying, so:
> For the purposes of running LLM models, a Mac Mini
The M4 Max is the one that actually gives you a shit load of memory bandwidth. If you just get a normal M4 it's not going to be especially good at that.
> it doesn't have MacOS
The Mac can't run Windows, which is used by ~75% of all desktop computer users and the main operating system that video games target. I'd say that would be the bigger problem for many.
> Apple's service
What advantage does that get you over Framework's service?
> resale value
Framework resale value has proven to be excellent by the way. Go to eBay, search "Framework Laptop", go to "Sold Items". Many SKUs seem to be retaining most of their value.
(Nevermind the ease of repair for the Framework, or the superior expandability. If you want to expand the disk space on an M4 you need to get sketchy parts, possibly solder things, and rescue your Mac with another Mac. For framework devices you plug in another M.2 card.)
Macs can run Windows just fine, through Parallels. It’s more efficient at doing so than most ARM based windows machines on sale still. And I found software compatibility with Windows 11 for ARM to be a non issue nowadays.
I can't tell you how much I disagree with this take.
Microsoft's AMD64 emulator is slow and buggy compared to Rosetta, and you will need it a lot more, too. Many apps will need to rely on this, including programs many users will immediately try to use, like Visual Studio. Neither Visual Studio nor its compilers support running on an ARM host; it does seem to basically work, but is slow, which is not good considering Visual Studio is already not particularly fast. It will even display a message box warning you that it is not supported during setup, so you couldn't miss it (note that this applies to the Visual Studio compilers needed by Python and Node for installing packages with C extensions). MSys2 gave me a lot of trouble, too; the setup just doesn't seem to work on ARM64. Chocolatey often installs AMD64 or x86 binaries on ARM instead of native ones; sometimes native ones don't exist anyways. Third party thing that needs to load a kernel module? Don't bet on there being an ARM64 build of it; sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. WinFSP has a build, many hardware drivers I've looked at don't seem to (don't laugh: you can pass through USB devices, there is sense in installing actual hardware drivers.) I just set up a fresh copy of Parallels on an M3 Mac a couple months ago, I'm stopping now to be terse, this paragraph could easily be much longer. It would suffice to say that basic Windows software usage is a lot worse on Parallels than a native Windows AMD64 machine. Very useful, sure. At parity, oh no. Not close.
That's just the basics though. For GPU, Parallels does do some D3D11 translation which is (a lot!) better than nothing, but you are not getting native performance, you are not getting Vulkan support, and you are certainly not getting ROCm or CUDA or anything equivalent, so actually a lot of apps that practically need GPU acceleration are not going to be usable anyways. Even if a video game would run, anti-piracy and anti-cheat measures in lots of modern games detect and block users using VM software, not that you can expect that all of the games you want to run would even work anyways on ARM; plenty of games are known to be unstable and some don't work at all. There are other side effects of trying to do actual gaming in VMs in general, but I really think this gets the point across: Windows games and multimedia are significantly worse in Parallels than on a native machine.
Parallels filesystem bridging is impractical, it's not fast enough and it is buggy, i.e. running Bazel on bridged files will not work. This means you need to copy stuff back and forth basically all the time if you want to work on stuff natively but then test on Windows. Maybe this is partly Window's fault, but in any case it would suffice to say that workflows that involve Windows will be a lot clunkier than they would be on a native Windows machine.
I think these conclusions, that a native Windows machine would be a lot better for doing Windows things than a Mac running Parallels, is actually pretty obvious and self-evident, but reading what you said might literally give someone the opposite impression, that there is little reason to possibly want to run Windows. This is just misleading. Parallels is a great option as a last resort or to fill a gap, but if you have anything that regularly requires you to use Windows software or test on Windows, Parallels is not a very serious option. It may be cheaper than two machines in fiat currency, but probably not in sanity.
I don't know you, so I can't and won't, based on a single post, accuse you of being a fanboy. However, this genre of retort is a serious issue with fanboyism. It's easy to say "Windows? just use VMs!", but that's because for some people, actually just using Windows is probably not a serious option they would consider anyways; if the VM didn't work for a use case they'd back up and reconsider almost anything else before they reconsider their choice of OS or hardware vendor, but they probably barely need (if at all) a VM with Windows anyways. If this feels like a personal attack, I'd like to clarify that I am describing myself. I will not use Windows. I don't have a bare metal Windows machine in my house, and I do my best to limit Windows usage in VMs, too. Hell, I will basically only use macOS under duress these days, I'm not a fan of the direction it has gone either.
Still, I do not go around telling people that they should just go switch to Linux if they don't like Windows, and that Virtualbox or Wine will solve all of their problems, because that's probably not true and it's downright dishonest when deep down I know how well the experience will go. The honest and respectful thing to tell people about Linux is that it will suck, some of the random hardware you use might not work, some of your software won't work well under Wine or VMs, and you might spend more time troubleshooting. If they're still interested even after proper cautioning, chances are they'll actually go through with it and figure it out: people do not need to be sold a romantic vision, if anything they need the opposite, because they may struggle to foresee what kinds of problems they might run into. Telling people that virtual machines are a magic solution and you don't have to care about software compatibility is insane, and I say that with full awareness that Parallels is better than many of the other options in terms of user friendliness and out of the box capabilities.
I think the same thing is fair to do for macOS. With macOS there is the advantage that the entire experience is nicer as long as everything you want to do fits nicely into Apple's opinionated playbook and you buy into Apple's ecosystem, but I rarely hear people actually mention those latter caveats. I rarely hear people mention that, oh yeah, a lot of cool features I use only work because i use Apple hardware and services throughout my entire life, and your Android phone might not work as well, especially not with those expensive headphones I think you should get for your Mac. Fanboys of things have a dastardly way of only showing people the compelling side of things and leaving out the caveats. I don't appreciate this, and I think it ultimately has an overtone of thinking you know what someone wants better than they do. If someone is really going to be interested in living the Mac life, they don't need to be mislead to be compelled.
> Mac Mini with 32GB of RAM, 512 GB storage: $1,199.00
You're looking at the wrong Mac Mini. The model with the M4 Pro is the right comparison, on account of also having a 256-bit memory bus giving substantially higher bandwidth than a typical desktop computer. The M4 Pro model doesn't have a 32GB option.
The M4 Max (not available in a Mac Mini) has an even larger memory bus, giving it far more bandwidth than either the M4 Pro or the AMD Strix Halo part used by Framework.
I was just going for a head-to-head comparison, that's the closest you can get in price/performance. The closest M4 Pro Mac Mini is already a lot more expensive than the baseline Framework Desktop.
The Framework Desktop Max+ 395 with 128 GB of RAM, and a 500 GB SSD costs around $2,147.00 USD before tax. The M4 Pro with the 20-core GPU, 64 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB SSD costs around $2,199.00 USD. That's still short 64 GB of RAM, of course.*
The lowest-end M4 Max Mac Studio that can support 128 GB of RAM seems to cost $3,499.00 with 128 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD. For that you get 546GB/s of maximum memory bandwidth according to Apple, which is definitely a step up from the 256GB/s maximum for the Ryzen AI Max+ 395, but obviously also at a price that is quite higher too.
Apparently though, 128 GB of RAM is currently the ceiling for the M4 Max right now. So it seems like if you were going for a maximum performance local AI cluster at any price, the M3 Ultra Mac Studios are definitely in the running, though at that point it probably is starting to get to the price where AMD and NVIDIA's data center GPUs start to enter the picture, and AMD Instinct cards measure memory bandwidth in terabytes per second.
* Regarding GPUs: The Framework Desktop Max+ 395 Radeon 8060S seems to be vastly faster than all of the non-Max M4 SKUs, for anyone that cares a lot about GPU performance. The M4 Max seems to outperform the 8060S by a bit though, and obviously it has some stand-out features like a shit load of video encoding/decoding hardware. This complicates the value comparison a lot. The Radeon core definitely gets a much better value for the performance in any case. I'm really impressed by what they managed to do there.
I count not needing to use macOS a big plus. Full Linux support out of the box.
> but it doesn't have MacOS, Apple's service or resale value.
If the purpose is running LLMs non of that matters.
But Linux support is an advantage. Does the M4 have that?
Why doesn't it matter? Does your computer magically stop needing to be serviced or eventually sold because you're running LLMs?
I run Linux containers all the time.
None of my computers ever needed service.
The LLM point is that Linux is better suited for most AI tools and their toolchains
The M4 has half the memory bandwidth of the 395+ and the specs on those models are absolute trash. To get an M4 Pro APU and decent specs you're spending at least as much as the Framework, at least here in Canada.
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.
Right, but why go with mobile at all? I get the laptops.
For desktop you already have thousands of choices though and reparability, assuming its not some proprietary Dell/HP desktop, is already as good as it gets without breaking out your soldering iron.
That said, they'll know more about the market demand than I do and another option won't hurt :)
The specific chip powering the Framework Desktop is something very unique in the PC landscape in general, even in desktop. The Strix Halo chip pairs a 16 core CPU with a huge iGPU that performs like a desktop discrete GPU, and 128GB of RAM (accessible on the GPU).
Strix Halo is almost like having a PS5 or Xbox chip but available for the PC ecosystem. It's a super interesting and unique part for GPU compute, AI, or small form factor gaming.
Quiet desktop PCs with good thermals have been getting increased interest — not everyone needs a tower, for some a Mac Mini-like device would work great, but not everyone wants to get into the Apple ecosystem for various reasons.
Of course this PC is interesting in that it’s more “workstation class” and I’m not sure how much thermals matter there, but maybe this is an iteration towards a Mac Studio like device.
> Right, but why go with mobile at all? I get the laptops.
Pair a power-efficient mobile chip with a mini-desktop form factor and a good (i.e. probably overengineered, to some extent) cooling solution, and it will give you a kind of sustained performance and reliability over time that you just aren't going to get from the average consumer/enthusiast desktop chip. Great for workstation-like use cases that still don't quite need the raw performance and official support you'd get from a real, honest-to-goodness HEDT.
The most reliable computers I have are the "consumer/enthusiasts" computers I have.
Because its using a Strix Halo APU which to some is kinda interesting, and to others all they need for sometime.
Supporting OSS and repairable hardware?
A normal desktop with non-soldered components is more repairable, cheaper and can also run on stock Linux?
The only selling point is the form factor and a massive amount of GPU memory, but a dGPU offers more raw compute.
AMD APUs can run stock Linux.
All those SteamOS handhelds are on AMD.
> with non-soldered components is more repairable
This is literally the limitation of the platform. Why even bring that up? Framework took a part made by AMD and put in their devices.
OSS is fair.
From the product page I don't see how that mainboard is more repairable than a typical ITX one though. As far as I can tell, you also cannot change the CPU on it so even less than a typical desktop mainboard.
By buying their devices you directly support company and mission that they're on. I'm not a diehard OSS supporter (Mac user here), but I consider buying The Framework Desktop just to support the company over, say, Dell or HP.
> but I consider buying The Framework Desktop just to support the company over, say, Dell or HP.
Exactly. Between those three companies, only one of them is likely to even try to make something like core boot possible on this machine. That’s something I can afford to encourage.
I'm realizing that I may have misunderstood Framework's market. I thought it was tinkerers and environmentally conscious FOSS nerds like me, but I think there maybe be a huge enterprise segment whose employees in charging of purchasing are like me but answer to much more strict business needs than "Isn't it cool that it comes with a screwdriver in the box?" So for example the underpowered cpu in the fw12 makes no sense to me until I found out that it's also designed for mass purchases by schools and designed to be flung around by angsty teens. The desktop seems to be meant to be strapped to the underside of 40 identical cubicals in an office as much as it's meant to be apparently hauled around by people that want to have CSGO lan parties.
> So for example the underpowered cpu in the fw12 makes no sense to me until I found out that it's also designed for mass purchases by schools and designed to be flung around by angsty teens.
I think that might be overstating it a bit. Real "rugged" laptops do exist, and would be quite at home in that kind of use (well, usually you'd worry a lot more about how kids in primary school will treat your hardware than teenagers) but the Framework 12 is not one.
Real "rugged" laptops are far too expensive for schools to buy by the dozen. Also, while robust against the environment they're not so much against deliberate vandalism or theft. The target market for those seems to be construction/industrial and similar, and of course the military.
All school laptop fleets I've seen are simply the cheapest thing they can buy in bulk, when it breaks provision a new one.
That's one point for the sub-$250 Chromebooks for sure.