Framework Desktop hands-on: a possible new direction for gaming desktops

Framework’s mission is to “fix consumer electronics, one category at a time” by making them modular, repairable, and upgradable. It’s the only laptop maker to ever truly succeed at that “upgradable” part. But desktop PCs are already modular, so why is Framework making one?

At first, I thought it saw a unique opportunity to make a cute yet badass tiny gaming PC with AMD’s unusual Strix Halo processor and decided to shoot its shot. As you’ll read below, I’m excited by the result. But I also have another idea I’ll share with you afterward.

Let’s start with the gadget part: yes, the tiny 4.5-liter gaming desktop that Framework announced yesterday is just as cool in person as it was in Framework’s photos, and yes, it can game.

At first, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to meaningfully try that last part. Almost all the Framework Desktops at the company’s live event in San Francisco yesterday were either running games that don’t offer a great sense of performance (Counter-Strike and Street Fighter) or were unplugged so we could take photos from every angle. But partway through the event, someone had fired up Cyberpunk 2077, and I saw my chance.

The first benchmark was promising but not exactly running smoothly, averaging just under 30fps at 4K with ray tracing, FSR upscaling, and Frame Generation turned on. But when we swapped to a native 1440p at Ultra settings, no ray tracing, and none of AMD’s fancy tricks, I saw a PS5-beating 73fps average — with lows of 60fps! — from a box that’s actually smaller than a PS5 (or an Xbox Series X) in volume.

That’s because the Framework Desktop contains a new and rather unusual AMD Ryzen AI Max processor whose integrated Radeon 8060S graphics are as powerful as a discrete mobile graphics chip — namely, the laptop version of the Nvidia RTX 4060 — and can apparently trade blows with the mobile RTX 4070 when it gets enough sustained power like the 120 watts it can tap into here. It also shares a massive amount of unified LPDDR5x memory across the entire system, including graphics — up to 96GB of VRAM for its GPU.

While an Asus tablet and an HP laptop also contain the same chip, the Strix Halo’s power may be constrained by its cooling and battery, and yet, unconstrained, the chip still doesn’t have enough power to supplant today’s big gaming laptops or desktops. But here, Framework has built an attractive miniature desktop that’s not quite like anything that currently exists.

It lets you pick your own front I/O ports thanks to the same expansion cards on Framework’s laptops. It has magnetic front and side panels that easily pop into place, then slide down to secure. There’s an optional carry handle that I already love — when you spin each of its halves into place, they act as the thumbscrews to keep your case fully closed, then you screw the two halves of the handle together using the handle itself, and it feels incredibly secure once you’re done. (See my embedded video if that sounds confusing.)

It also seems easy to personalize this case: there are 21 slots for colored plastic squares on the front panel, you can 3D print your own (I saw some Lego bits attached to 3D-printed studs on one and fake grass attached to another), and it’s incredibly easy to pop the squares out to make room for new ones if you remove the front panel first.

I’m not yet sold on this computer being easy to upgrade like Framework’s other products, though. Even forgetting the soldered memory, there’s not necessarily enough space in here to maneuver its parts like a larger desktop; I had to reach inside pretty delicately to unplug the ATX motherboard power cable and USB headers. While removing the fan, storage, and Wi-Fi modules is quite easy, I was told I’d have to disassemble the top rails of the case itself to remove the motherboard, which doesn’t have enough room to escape through the large side panel hole.

But it’s possible some of that will change before its Q3 launch; Framework stopped me before I could fully extract the board or remove the cooler to expose the Strix Halo chip, telling me that what I’d see underneath is not quite final.

Since yesterday morning’s announcement, I’ve already seen a bunch of reasonable people questioning whether this desktop makes sense — is it truly a modular desktop with no upgradable socketed CPUs, GPUs, or memory? — and noting how unusual it is for Framework to dive into a category it can’t necessarily improve.

But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if single-board computing might genuinely be a new direction for mini desktops. They’ve largely been at the mercy of the vestigial ATX motherboard spec for a long time, a spec that’s long assumed you’ll plug your memory modules and graphics cards at a 90-degree angle to your motherboard, sticking out perpendicularly, which limits the sizes and shapes of upgradable mini PC designs.

With Framework’s laptops, the reason they’re so easily upgradable is that Framework builds an entire computer on a swappable board, right down to the USB-C ports, save for the other components you might like to easily upgrade (storage, memory, and Wi-Fi / Bluetooth radios). This is only one component (memory) different from that, and maybe flat-mount CAMM memory can change that in future designs. (Framework’s CEO told Linus that CAMM wasn’t going to work for Strix Halo, though.)

Maybe Framework can help unlock more new sizes and shapes of mini PCs, especially if others follow its lead, which feels more likely now that it’s iterating on an existing standard desktop motherboard spacing pattern, rather than boards designed to fit specific Framework laptops. Maybe Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm might like to get in on single-board mini PCs that’d fit such computers, too.

Even if not, AMD seems potentially interested in doing more. At CES, I asked AMD chief gaming solutions architect Frank Azor if Strix Halo was a one-off, like the unusual Intel chip with AMD graphics that also once powered a tiny gaming PC, or if it’s a new category that’ll stick around. He said he couldn’t announce any new products but noted that it was extremely expensive to build this new “Halo” tier. The hope is that it’ll create a new category by enabling laptops and ultra small form factor PCs to do things they couldn’t do before.

I also asked Azor if Strix Halo was cost-effective; specifically, if manufacturers can build systems with a single Strix Halo instead of a similarly performing discrete CPU and discrete GPU without paying more. He said yes, they could, and get the benefits of AMD’s fast unified memory as well.

I will note, though, that Framework did not promise that the Framework Desktop would have future revisions or boards available. And there’s no mention of upgradability on its product page. While Framework CEO Nirav Patel told me last April that every new product is the “first stake in the ground” for a new category, and that they won’t be one-offs, it’s a bit murkier whether we’ll see future Framework Desktop boards than whether the Framework Laptop 16 will get future GPU upgrades.