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Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique—mini ITX gaming PC
(arstechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Soldered on ram and GPU. Strange for Framework.
Apparently AMD couldn’t make the signal integrity work out with socketed RAM. (source: LTT video with Framework CEO)
IMHO: Up until now, using soldered RAM was lazy and cheap bullshit. But I do think we are at the limit of what’s reasonable to do over socketed RAM. In high performance datacenter applications, socketed RAM is on it’s way out (see: MI300A, Grace-{Hopper,Blackwell},Xeon Max), with onboard memory gaining ground. I think we’ll see the same trend on consumer stuff as well. Requirements on memory bandwidth and latency are going up with recent trends like powerful integrated graphics and AI-slop, and socketed RAM simply won’t work.
It’s sad, but in a few generations I think only the lower end consumer CPUs will be possible to use with socketed RAM. I’m betting the high performance consumer CPUs will require not only soldered, but on-board RAM.
Finally, some Grace Hopper to make everyone happy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gYqF6-h9Cvg
Honestly I upgrade every few years and isually have to purchase a new mobo anyhow. I do think this could lead to less options for mobos though.
I get it but imagine the GPU style markup when all mobos have a set amount of RAM. You'll have two identical boards except for $30 worth of memory with a price spread of $200+. Not fun.