The most obvious question is Why?" Framework builds modular, repairable laptops that anyone can take apart and put back together again. It's a big deal in an era where laptops are regularly sold as a single unit that, should one part break, goes in the trash. Since every part of a Framework machine can be swapped out, you can keep one going for as long as your patience, and the supply of spare parts, allows. Desktops, however, are already modular and repairable - company founder Nirav Patel said desktop PC ethos was one of the core inspirations for the Framework laptop to begin with." So, if desktops are already modular and repairable, why do we need one from Framework? When the Desktop was announced, Patel said the genesis of the product came from seeing a preview of AMD's Ryzen AI Max. It's an APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) - AMD's term for a chip combining a CPU, GPU and NPU in a single package, much like Apple Silicon - with plenty of hyped-up claims about its performance. Those claims were so compelling that Patel added the Desktop to the company's roadmap just to harness that potential power. The big selling point for this chip is the sheer volume of RAM you can employ (up to 128GB) and the massive memory bandwidth (up to 265GB/s) it can take advantage of. AMD described it as a workstation-level" chip that'll work in a regular ol PC, with the base model priced at $1,099. But there's a devil's bargain in opting for such a powerful chip, since to get it means Framework has had to give up a lot of its founding principles. As someone probably once wrote, for what shall it profit a computer manufacturer if it shall gain searing power but lose its own soul? Hardware The major issue with the Ryzen AI Max is its inflexibility since it's made as a single package. Much like Apple Silicon products, you'll need to pick your chip spec in the knowledge that you don't get to change things later. Consequently, you'll be ordering the Framework Desktop in one of three unchangeable flavors: