The WIRED Project: Benchmarking a Mini PC with Radeon Processors and GPUs for Build-and-Manufacture

None of these are impulse buys, exactly, but they’re priced a bit better than a gaming-focused mini PC like the Asus ROG NUC, which starts at nearly $1,300 as of this writing and comes with half as much RAM. It’s also cheaper than what you can get from a mini ITX PC that uses integrated graphics, with a range of prices from $500 to $775 with a case.

In Framework’s first-party case, the PC starts at $1,099, which gets you a Ryzen AI Max 385 (that’s an 8-core CPU and 32 GPU cores) and 32 GB of RAM. A full load 128 bit server with a RyzenAI max+ 395 configuration (16 processor, 40 graphics core) will set you back $1,899. There’s also an in-between build with the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 chip and 64 GB of RAM for $1,599. For just the mini ITX board, that starts at $799.

The Framework Desktop is powered by an AMD Ryzen AI Max processor, a Radeon 8060S integrated GPU, and between 32 GB and 128 GB of soldered-in RAM. Despite being built with the same technology as the rest of the board, the Asus ROG Flow Z13 tablets have a more thermally constrained version of these chips.

Framework Desktop announced today that it will be introducing a gaming PC that takes advantage of many PC standards and offers a unique combination of small size and high performance but which is otherwise substantially less modular and upgradeable than a mini PC you can already build for yourself.

What does a company that is attempting to build a more desktop-like laptop have to do to bring things that are already standard, upgradeable and repairable to the desktop scene?

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The Framework Laptop 12: A New, High-resolution, Modular, and Well-Purpose Computer for a Budget Laptop

The company is doing it again. Framework announced a new PC and a new laptop. The Laptop 12 is a budget laptop that doesn’t look awful, is fully modular and doesn’t skimp on the performance and display. It sounds too good to be true, so you’re not alone. We don’t know the price yet, which is incredibly important. Framework’s stated goal is to keep a “budget” laptop.

We’re still missing several details to complete the picture, like the laptop’s thickness and weight—those details will arrive when preorders open up in April—but photos of the machine show a stylish PC that looks better than any budget laptop I’ve ever seen. The five bold, new color options don’t hurt either.

It has some very thick bezels around the display, though, something you won’t find outside the budget Chromebook world these days. The display on the Laptop 12 is better than what you would typically find on a budget laptop. It has a 1920 X 1200-pixel resolution and up to 400 nits of brightness (the MacBook Air tops out at 500 nits).