The bad thing about Framework Desktop is that it has welded memory. Good too

In 2021 the portable panorama was bleak in a key section: The right to repair. Manufacturers made it more difficult to try to solve problems or update these machines. It was then that a small and unknown company He showed us That there was an alternative. That company was called (and is called) Framework.

Their Modular laptops have since demonstrated being An absolute reference in repability and expansion capacityand in recent years they have maintained that tradition. A few months ago they advanced the launch of Two new portable modelsbut next to them a surprising machine arrived: a desktop minipc that, curiously, seemed a betrayal to the principles of the company.

That machine is none other than the Framework Desktopa different team both for its exterior and its interior. To start, we are talking about a minipc format equipment with a mini -it plaque and a tiny box with a volume of 4.5 liters.

That box also has A differentiating design With a front panel in which we can place 21 “tiles” that we can also customize by printing them in 3D ourselves (The designs To do so they are available).

The team also presumes from those already famous modular ports in their laptops and that allow to create a tailored inputs and outputs. We can buy them separately and incorporate new modules when we need it. That in regards to the outside. Inside, the technical specifications are as follows:

In these specifications it surprises how we say we find a configuration in which the AMD soc (with the CPU, the integrated GPU and the NPU) is welded to the motherboard, but it is also the memory. That seems a betrayal to the “replaceable and replaceable” spirit of Framework teams, and is something that has already caused some criticism.

A the AI workstation for all audiences

Some of the analysis Independents who have evaluated the team criticize him for that. However, that decision has its reason for being: as the company responsible explained in the Official announcement:

“To enable the huge 256 GB/s memory bandwidth offered by Ryzen AI Max, the LPDDR5X has welded. We spent months working with AMD to explore ways to solve this, but finally we determine that it was not technically viable to install modular memory with high performance with the 256 -bit memory bus.”

It is a reasonable argument, especially considering that although this team has a certain gaming personality, its true focus is another. These teams make use of a unified memory architecture (UMA) That makes no dedicated video memory: the GPU uses RAM as video memory, so 32, 64 or 128 GB of RAM are shared between CPU and GPU. It is an idea similar to the one handled by Apple in its MX chips: there the unified memory allows to be used interchangeably by the CPU or the GPU.

And there is the interesting thing about these machines, which are in essence affordable work stations to work with local AI models. We already talked about this week of how GPT-Oss-20b, Openai’s open model was great but showed that having a lot of graphic memory was important for this type of scenarios.

Well, Framework Desktop raises a decent alternative to Apple teams and their unified memory. If, for example, we buy the 128 GB model of RAM (2,359 euros), We could dedicate up to 112 GB of those available for video memory. That gives a lot of play to work with heavy models such as the “Large” variant of Openai (GPT-Oss-120b) or, as they explain in Framework, with models as it calls 3.3 70b Q6, for example.

In fact, that is where this team really provides value, which also maintains a low profile in terms of power (the consumption peak is 140W) and also in noise. We are not before a gaming team competitor with dedicated graphics: if what you want is to play every pill (even in Minipc format), this may not be the best alternative.

But if you want, you are rather occasional gamers and what you are interested in is to have a powerful work team and allow you to experiment with local AI models, We are facing what is probably one of the best current alternatives If you are looking for a compact, efficient and silent team.

The other options are clear: a high -end MAC with the maximum amount of unified memory that you can pay, or a PC in which you combine several dedicated graphics (to add their graphic memories) and that therefore will consume a lot of energy, it will be voluminous and predictably make a lot of noise.

Could Framework Desktop have been a more modular, reparable and replaceable equipment? Definitely. But that is what are already the majority of current PCs. Here the manufacturer has taken another way, and we believe it is a very interesting approach. Now it will be the users who will decide (you will decide).

In Xataka | Logitech’s controversial “mouse” does not need subscriptions. What you need is to be repairable