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.