Tuesday, February 25th 2025

Framework Announces New Gaming Mini Desktop

Today, we introduced the Framework Desktop, a tiny 4.5L Mini-ITX desktop powered by AMD's massive new Ryzen AI Max processors. Pre-orders are open now, with first shipments in early Q3 2025. When AMD shared the Ryzen AI Max with us, we immediately knew we had to use it. It has up to 16 CPU cores at 5.1 GHz boost clock, discrete-level Radeon 8060S graphics, and support for up to an insane 128 GB of unified LPDDR5x. That enables 1440p or higher gaming on the heaviest titles, big creative and workstation workloads, and true local AI use cases. This is an absolute monster of a processor, and we shifted our roadmap a year ago to make space for it. In a desktop form factor, we get to unlock every bit of its performance with 120 W sustained power and 140 W boost while staying quiet and cool.

You may still be wondering, why does Framework need to build a desktop? Aren't desktops already modular and upgradeable? They are. In fact, the desktop PC ethos is part of what inspired the Framework Laptop to begin with. The desktop world is amazing. There is a broad, long-lived, interoperable ecosystem with hundreds of brands and hundreds of millions of consumers participating. You can build, upgrade, repair, and personalize to the limits of your imagination (and budget, and desk space), and share your amazing creations with all of the other true believers. We want to make this space as accessible as we possibly can by building a desktop that is simultaneously small and simple and incredibly powerful and customizable. Everyone should have the opportunity to experience the culture around PCs and PC gaming first-hand.
With that in mind, we leveraged all of the key PC standards everywhere we could. Framework Desktop's Ryzen AI Max-powered Mainboard is a standard Mini-ITX form factor with ATX headers, a PCIe x4 slot, and a broad set of rear I/O (including 2x USB4, 2x DisplayPort, HDMI, and 5Gbit Ethernet), so you can drop it into your own case if you prefer. We developed a semi-custom 400 W power supply with FSP in a standard Flex ATX form factor. We use standard 120 mm CPU fans with a thermal system co-developed with Cooler Master and Noctua, and you can choose to bring your own fan as well if you prefer. We enabled two PCIe NVMe M.2 2280 slots for up to 16 TB of storage and Wi-Fi 7 through an RZ717 Wi-Fi module.

Framework Desktop brings the PC ethos around customization as well. You can choose between black and translucent side panels, select an RGB fan, and attach an optional carrying handle to bring it with you to LAN parties (or just to your living room). We also designed the front panel of the case to be made up of 21 color-customizable tiles, and we've open sourced the design so you can 3D print your own too. We also brought over the Expansion Card system from Framework Laptops, with two slots at the front of Framework Desktop enabling front port customization.
There is one place we did have to step away from PC norms though, which is on memory. To enable the massive 256 GB/s memory bandwidth that Ryzen AI Max delivers, the LPDDR5x is soldered. We spent months working with AMD to explore ways around this but ultimately determined that it wasn't technically feasible to land modular memory at high throughput with the 256-bit memory bus. Because the memory is non-upgradeable, we're being deliberate in making memory pricing more reasonable than you might find with other brands.

The top-end Ryzen AI Max+ 395 configuration with 128 GB of memory starts at just $1999 USD. This is excellent for gaming, but it is a truly wild value proposition for AI workloads. Local AI inference has been heavily restricted to date by the limited memory capacity and high prices of consumer and workstation graphics cards. With Framework Desktop, you can run giant, capable models like Llama 3.3 70B Q6 at real-time conversational speed right on your desk. With USB4 and 5Gbit Ethernet networking, you can connect multiple systems or Mainboards to run even larger models like the full DeepSeek R1 671B.

The base Framework Desktop comes in even lower, with the 8-core Ryzen AI Max 385 configuration with 32 GB of memory starting at $1099. All of the systems are DIY Editions, meaning you can choose to bring your own storage and operating system. This is the easiest PC you'll ever build, and we'll be publishing step-by-step guides and videos to get you there. Framework Desktop supports both Windows 11 and a range of popular Linux distros like Ubuntu and Fedora, along with gaming-focused OS's like Bazzite and Playtron. You can also pre-order the Mainboard on its own today, starting at $799. This is truly a game-changing processor from AMD, and we're excited for you to see what we've done with it in the Framework Desktop.

Source: Framework
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21 Comments on Framework Announces New Gaming Mini Desktop

#1
aktpu
Mobo as a standalone are kinda interesting, now if only their site would work so one could see their pricing (Ryzen AI Max+ 395 64GB is what I'd want)
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#3
jimmyxxx
No open-ended PCI-E, sorry this is a pass for me.
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#4
Caring1
Linus has a video on it already.
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#5
JohH
I like the motherboard. I don't think it is for gamers, really, though. Big VRAM for ML.
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#6
ZoneDymo
Caring1Linus has a video on it already.
great but I stopped watching that guy a while ago, something to do with a backpack and the whole attitude.
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#7
nienorgt
I don't like the idea of using mobile parts in Framework "upgrade easily" philosophy.
Where's it is quite a necessary evil for laptops, desktop is another thing.
It is also possible to make a "Mini PC" with a Framework motherboard.

But it has to be said, small graphics cards are are rare and there's no push to keep them going and AMD is literally making discreet GPU performance in their latest high end APU, so I see why they went that way.

(To be transparent, I both own a Mini PC as an homelab and a Mac Mini, so I understand why people want them, it's just the reasoning with Framework philosophy that irk me)
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#8
Fouquin
jimmyxxxNo open-ended PCI-E, sorry this is a pass for me.
Doesn't look impeded, just snip the back off the PCI-E. Should have been an open slot to begin with but at least it's a 30-second fix.
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#9
Nostras
FouquinDoesn't look impeded, just snip the back off the PCI-E. Should have been an open slot to begin with but at least it's a 30-second fix.
Was about to say this. Was common back at the start of the mining days to just remove it by hand until risers became more commonplace.
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#10
TPUnique
Man, what a great surprise, this announcement ! Just put a deposit for a standalone mobo.

Standard ITX form factor, with standard PSU connectors and standard fans for the radiator, with a BIOS/software support that should easily be better than the likes of Minisforum... that's pretty much ticks all the boxes

Pricing is steep for the higher end options, and won't ship before 3T, but the 100€ deposit is small and refundable. I'll still have time to change my mind.

It'd also help me sit out the next gen of GPUs, aside from AMD's and nVidia's current shitshows.
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#11
trsttte
Wow, this is surprising on several levels. Some of the choices are weird, like letting go of the modular ram (why not lpcamm?), but this is a big fuck you to nvidia project digits - undercutting it by 1000$ - and could be a great tech demonstrator for AMD if they know how to play it.

They should be pushing to deliver this to market yesterday!
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#13
Chaitanya
Didnt see that one coming, would like to see PCIe x8 slot even if its for adding storage/interface cards.
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#14
Fouquin
trsttteWow, this is surprising on several levels. Some of the choices are weird, like letting go of the modular ram (why not lpcamm?), but this is a big fuck you to nvidia project digits - undercutting it by 1000$ - and could be a great tech demonstrator for AMD if they know how to play it.

They should be pushing to deliver this to market yesterday!
In the presentation Nirav alludes to the engineering team attempting LPCAMM2 and didn't find it could work for this layout. Since the APU needs 256-bit memory pathing, the board area required to fit the pads for LPCAMM2 would be massive in the context of an ITX layout. The alternative is to halve the memory bus and that would cripple the entire purpose of Strix Halo.
Chaitanyawould like to see PCIe x8 slot even if its for adding storage/interface cards.
They could probably have offered x8 with the caveat that it would disable one of the M.2 ports. The APU only has 16 lanes to split out. But other than a quad-SSD card or GPU, what needs x8 lanes in this context? If you want to install your own GPU anyway that needs x8 lanes, you'd probably be better served by something like Minisforum's BD790/BD795 series that don't already have a massive desktop-class iGPU built in and have the lane allocation for a dGPU.
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#15
TPUnique
trsttteWow, this is surprising on several levels. Some of the choices are weird, like letting go of the modular ram (why not lpcamm?), but this is a big fuck you to nvidia project digits - undercutting it by 1000$ - and could be a great tech demonstrator for AMD if they know how to play it.

They should be pushing to deliver this to market yesterday!
Apparently there's an LTT video about that, where it's explained that Framework asked AMD whether this was feasible, and testing revealed that signal integrity was an issue.
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#16
mechtech
Too bad they didn't use a pcie that was open on end so a 16x card could be put in.

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#17
trsttte
mechtechToo bad they didn't use a pcie that was open on end so a 16x card could be put in.

They still could, pretty simple change to implement on the final product assembly. If they don't life finds a way...

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#18
Chaitanya
trsttteThey still could, pretty simple change to implement on the final product assembly. If they don't life finds a way...

Or you can PCIe extension/riser cable that has either open ended slot or x16 slot(physical), since most mini ITX cases these days need those cables for add-in cards.
www.newegg.com/p/35G-00HX-00159
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#20
TumbleGeorge
"slightly" overpriced. Not problem, have time to wait.
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#21
wickerman
Great little surprise, would be a hell of a steamos powered DIY gaming console. Performance should be fantastic and plenty of io - even if your expansion slot is only pcie 4x. Sure it means you cant slot your old desktop GPU into this sort of thing without sacrifices but this is a MONSTER APU and im glad to see it unrestricted by a laptop chassis.
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