Definitely firmware. If I give up on FrameWork it will be entirely due to the poor quality control of the firmware releases. The bugs and regressions in the last few releases of the AMD firmware are enough of a reason to stop recommending FrameWork until they get their firmware act together.
Also today I’m returning an AI 300 board, because it shipped with firmware that causes errors to be logged constantly while a charger is connected. Lastly the firmware is missing basic functionality which limits board reuse in a standalone configuration.