Why is the ram soldered? Soldered cpu is unfortunately a standard nowadays in laptops and sffs, but they rarely die, (actually I never met a cpu which died during normal usage), but ram is a thing which should be replaceable. I wouldn’t expect this from framework.
They sure do since I have one, literally from AMD.
What all these articles really are too generous with is the GPU performance this compromise was done to get. It’s… OK at best for the price. Reviews of products with the same chip/GPU have made specific mention of the weak GPU. What this actually is, and what AMD markets it for, is a small AI workstation. An AI workstation without CUDA is sadly not going to be a great experience for most. I think Framework made a mistake with this product.
Just don’t look for any memory slots — it’s 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,” writes Framework.
I thought framework is a manufacturer that presents itself as a brand for sustainable and diy friendly devices. Here they had to choose between memory bus bandwith and user replaceable parts, and they sided against their previous ethos. I’m disappointed.
Why is the ram soldered? Soldered cpu is unfortunately a standard nowadays in laptops and sffs, but they rarely die, (actually I never met a cpu which died during normal usage), but ram is a thing which should be replaceable. I wouldn’t expect this from framework.
Linus Tech Tips did a video, they had someone from framework and they actually gave a straight answer:
AMD worked with framework to try and implement user upgradable ram, but even with CAMM modules the signal integrity wasn’t good enough.
I’m pretty sure motherboards with integrated graphics and removable memory exist. “Good enough” is such an explicit unit of measurement.
They sure do since I have one, literally from AMD.
What all these articles really are too generous with is the GPU performance this compromise was done to get. It’s… OK at best for the price. Reviews of products with the same chip/GPU have made specific mention of the weak GPU. What this actually is, and what AMD markets it for, is a small AI workstation. An AI workstation without CUDA is sadly not going to be a great experience for most. I think Framework made a mistake with this product.
Answered in the article?
I thought framework is a manufacturer that presents itself as a brand for sustainable and diy friendly devices. Here they had to choose between memory bus bandwith and user replaceable parts, and they sided against their previous ethos. I’m disappointed.