The Framework Desktop is our third-favorite AMD Strix Halo mini PC so far. In our review, we are going to go over many of the things that make this system both good and where it has clear room for improvement. There were clearly items we struggled with in the process, and to be clear, given what we know now, I probably would not green-light STH purchasing another one, not because the system is bad, but simply because of the competition.
As a quick note, this is one that we pre-ordered a long time ago, but we purchased this unit. By the time this arrived, we already had a number of AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 systems, and soon thereafter, we had a cluster of NVIDIA GB10-based systems. As a result, we have at least ten of these 128GB mini PCs sitting on a desk in the studio, and some of the differences have started to come out. A lot of our thoughts on this comes from having tested so many of these.
One more recent thought is that these systems might actually be excellent values given the recent jump in DDR5 pricing. A few weeks ago, many would consider $1999 for the base price of a 128GB memory system to be high. Now given the spike in DDR5 pricing that feels quite reasonable.
The Framework Experience
I think it is wise to start with what you actually get. With other mini PCs, you might get something that boots out of the box with an opportunity to add drives or cards later. For Framework, you have to build as even buying the components with the system did not yield a finished system.
Some examples might be the left panel. We got a $40 upgraded Translucent version (black is standard), but this had to be unboxed and installed to make the system functional.
On the front, we have custom tile packs to make a design. Some of the special tiles can cost $5 each, but you are more than likely going to need at least three packs of black at $10 each to finish the front fascade. We wanted more colors, so we had extra tiles, but it also set us back $50 for five color packs.
Then let us get to the expansion modules.
There are only two on this platform, but you can customize the front panel with many types of functionality.
Think of these as little USB Type-C cards that expose functionality like an SD card slot, audio jack, Ethernet Jack, USB Type-A or Type-C ports, and so forth. A benefit of all of this is that you can change these out later if you want. The negative is that you only get two of these on the front.
Then there is the biggest reason that this is not ready to go out of the box. You can order one of the fan options or bring your own. We selected the Noctua fan kit, and it arrived in a box ready to be installed.
That leads us to one of the pitfalls of this Framework design. While I have put together many systems, so I naturally would install the label side of the Noctua fan towards the cooler, not everyone does this. We had someone newer to STH who usually deals with pre-built servers, networking gear, and mini PCs build the system and this is the result that you are going to see in many photos, and in a lot of the video. I had no idea until the team handed me the unit while we were filming the video.
While we can see the Noctua label, the fan works much better in the opposite orientation (it did keep light loads cool like this to be fair.) STH is a fairly technical publication, so the majority of our readers would not do this. Still, that is a huge difference between Framework and other AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 systems. This type of fan orientation is much less likely if the system is assembled and tested at the factory. Given the pricing of this unit, it does not seem like you get a discount for being part of the labor to build it, and instead also assume risk in the assembly. As much as I actually like this, and think it would be great to build as a first PC for my son, the majority of the market just wants to pull something out of a box and have it work, so it felt worth mentioning. To be fair, if we had not had someone on the team do this, I would not have considered it a potential issue.
The other challenge with this approach is that our configuration with 128GB of LPDDR5X, Windows 11 Pro, different tiles, a translucent side panel, a 2TB SSD, and the Noctua cooler costs about $2500, with a decent lead time. That puts it in the same pricing category as the Minisform S1-Max and considerably more than some other options out there. You may see a $1999 base price, but the reality is that getting a functional system with even a little bit of flair will set you back quite a bit more.
With the pricing and assembly done, let us get to the hardware.
 performs and compares to others we reviewed){kind=link}
One thing about the framework desktop that I really appreciated was that it came with the nvme heatsinks/mounting items even if those weren’t populated. My HP system didn’t have the heatsink for the slot that didn’t have a drive, which seemed pretty insulting for a system that was close to 3k USD.
Out of curiosity, and because it seems likely to be important for this ‘size’ of system; how good is the state of TB/USB4 ‘multiple connection’ networking?
Obviously not a good option if you want to throw a real switch in there; but if you only need a quite small cluster and TB networking actually works fairly well there are a variety of systems with deeply underwhelming NICs that become a lot more viable than they appear(mac minis, this and other Strix Halo units); while if TB networking is actually kind of terrible beyond ‘hey, I guess it’s nice that you can do a crossover connection between two devices; and it doesn’t cost extra’ then the NICs on the Nvidia units start to look like a much, much, more compelling feature.
Framework Desktop USB4 and mDP ports have been super flaky for me. It really hates driving 2 monitors where one is HDMI and the other mDP. Under every Linux distribution I’ve tried this combo is unusably flake.
This box also has a very nice BIOS which is all but impossible to access from a boot. USB keyboard handling to BIOS is also very flaky.
#fuzzyfuzzyfungus
TB Networking is good, but it really is just a point-to-point connection at anywhere between 18-25Gbps. You could potentially daisy-chain multiple of them or set them up in a ring topology. However, as you said, there is no proper switching. Perhaps if you had a storage server with Thunderbolt it might make sense.
A other caveat for the Framework Desktop is it’s availability – 90% of the world’s population are unable to buy a Framework, due to their draconic shipping policies (limited shipping + banning parcel forwarders + banning commercial resale). As a result, Frameworks are not an option for most folks unfortunately.
Another really solid and balanced review STH. I’m also liking the new MLPerf Client benchmarks. You didn’t cover it but 1.5 came out just about a week ago so those are recent
Kind of a silly question, but did you enable the 160W profile in windows? It’s not on by default with these. I ask because I did get slightly higher results than you do here.
The new MS-S1 looks appealing but it’s more of a 1-trick pony for the money. By the time you add 128gb of ram and a gpu – it’s way more expensive.
I went and built a custom mini its cube with dual 10gbe using the FW board and it was significantly cheaper.
Happy thanksgiving to STH. I’m dropping in just to say I liked this review. Thanks for using an industry standard MLPerf not just a roll-your-own that we can’t use to compare. I know it doesn’t really use big enough models to stress this with so much memory but it’s nice to see that being included
I think the fact that you can buy just the mainboard and supply the rest on your own makes this one an interessting choice.
The lack of top-tier networking is a bit of a shame though.
“A few weeks ago, many would consider $1999 for the base price of a 128GB memory system to be high. Now given the spike in DDR5 pricing that feels quite reasonable.”
If anything I think it may actually represent tremendous value, though perhaps only at this exact moment in time.
The pricing of future batches will almost definitely be increased at some point to account for the volatility of DDR5 cost/availability, but until that happens- given how severe the RAM shortage is portending to be (eg. with HP going on record as planning to curtail the amount of memory included with their systems, or how Nvidia is requiring some board partners to supply their own VRAM), if those supply issues start to drag from 2026 into 2027 or longer and begin impacting the release timing of the Steam Machine, or PlayStation 6 in the longer-term, etc. then one of the Framework Desktop SKUs with the Radeon 8060 could be a rather shrewd investment.
Full disclosure: I preordered one, and have laid down ~$3600 (Australian/AUD) for a full build of the Ryzen 395+ 128GB RAM model, after I worked out it would cost me ~$3100 to assemble a roughly equivalent SFF gaming PC without compromising too much on build size or the quality of the components.
[CPU] AMD Ryzen 9 9950X ($960)
[HSF] Noctua NH-L9a ($83)
[Case] Lian Li A4-H20 X4 ($199)
[PSU] Cooler Master 650W Gold SFX ($169)
[MB] * ($468)
[RAM] Corsair Vengeance 2x48GB DDR5-6000 CL36 kit ($720)
[GPU] Asus DUAL OC V2 GeForce RTX 4060 ($469)
*here I just picked the median price among the 13 in-stock results on PCPartPicker
To avoid using FSR/DLSS for gaming I would need to double my GPU budget to buy a 9700XT or 5070 Ti, and then also spend ~$220 on a better PSU, to end up with something that costs as much as the Framework anyway and is much worse for AI workloads. And all this is with Black Friday sales factored in.
With the economy the way it is, ie. how the top 10% of earners are now accounting for >50% of consumer spending, it’s likely that gaming PCs will become unaffordable to anyone other than the wealthiest of enthusiasts. And if that happens, I feel the Switch 2, PS5 (with its large install base and the PS6 delayed by the V/RAM shortage) ± the Steam Machine will become the main targets of developers for optimising performance vs. graphical fidelity – and to tie all this together, with where the Strix Halo APU’s performance is situated among those benchmarks it will benefit indirectly and remain relevant for several years.
My experience with FW Desktop is that it suffers from AMD TPM issues. The problem is that TPM becomes unavailable after some sleep&wake cycles forcing you to reboot your PC.
Hoping that guys fix that problem, because it makes this PC very annoying device.
So Patrick&Team please test this device with sleep&wake and Windows Hello / Windows Hello for Business.