Archive:

Framework Desktop

Posted: 24 May, 2026

Long term readers (are there any?) know that I've been rocking a Framework 13 laptop since they came out and have successfully upgraded it with the newer AMD motherboard. It's been a great work horse, that has more than lived up to its claims of upgradability.

For "reasons" (making games doesn't pay the bills as much these days) I started using it during the $dayjob. Initially as an experiment to see if I could daily drive Linux, but also to keep my game dev rig unpolluted (I don't want the company slack flashing away when I'm in Unreal Engine!) And the experiment really worked. Linux is a great place to live when you're making games for the web (no surprise), and I've been able to do everything I need to, quickly and easily. Yes, even use GIMP. Although I'm still holding my nose...

So I thought it was time to commit; I should buy a dedicated desktop machine for the paid work, keep my laptop as something I fart about with when I'm away, and my windows DevRig as-is, cos I am still making games when time allows. So, off to PC Specialist I go, and then promptly close Firefox after seeing the price of components these days.

Holy. Fucking. Shit. We are toast...

After giving up on that idea, Framework announced their new machines, and I remembered the Desktop. Is this the perfect option? Something small enough to live behind my monitor -- cos I don't have floor space for a big case, I want something teeny -- more poke than my laptop, and it has a GPU that should be able to drive my ultrawide, at full beans, without melting itself. All for a price that's not royally taking the piss...

I ordered one with no frills. Just the basics. Delivery took a while -- normally Framework are super quick -- as it crawled its way across China, visited a good chunk of the EU, and then had a few diversions through the UK before making it to Wales. But it got here in one piece. And like the laptop, had "minor" DIY element when you unbox it:

• Plug the drive in
• Attach the CPU fan
• Route the fan cable
• Screw everything back together.

Which takes all of five minutes, but gets you to inspect the innards and have a peek at what you've bought. Always good.

And it's tiny! The perfect size to sit behind my monitor.

I've been using it for about a month now, and it's neeeearly been perfect. The only problems I've had are actually with the GPU, which does not like turning my monitor on after sleep, or if the screensaver's locked it. Afaict, this is down to the drivers not landing in the kernal, so in theory, it should only be a temporary problem. But it did mean that I couldn't use HDMI to drive the ultrawide, I had to use display port. No biggy, in the scheme of things, once I found a fast enough cable to move the windows DevRig over to an HDMI port.

In day-to-day use I've come no where close to saturating the CPU, even during big compiles. The fan hardly ever spins up, so it's basically silent. Frankly, everything I hoped for.

I wouldn't use this as a games machine, although it's had no problems with the few things I've thrown at it, and I wouldn't use this to do anything in a "big" engine, like Unreal. But for web dev, the stuff I do on my fantasy console, and the Neo Geo dev I've been messing around with, this has absolutely smashed it. And it's been a first class Linux citizen, which is the main thing I was after.

I will report back if I ever feel the need to upgrade it. But given the price of things right now, I can't see that being any time in this decade. :(