I can somewhat get the frustration about the desktop not being the cheapest product on the market. It’s the same with the other Frame.Work products.
Personally I would love more affordable prices too - hopefully in the future with a bigger user base and larger numbers. Building this base simply takes time though.
There is so much outside of price that you can appreciate IMO:
additional thought that goes into their designs concerning repairability / upgradeability / modularity (sadly more restricted with the desktop, but they are very transparent with the reason why)
additional thought and development that went into the case, extension cards, tiles (that are purely cosmetic but still a nice touch) - heck… even 3D printable files and schematics of many parts published openly for the community to build on
DIY editions and easy to follow guides and tutorials that you simply don’t find with other vendors
supported and tested GNU/Linux based operating systems
option to bring your own components - for desktop primarily SSD (which is always cheaper and even recommended by the team iteself if you want to save money - as seen with other frame.work products)
completely refundable deposit, being able to cancel any time before shipping, 30 day return guarantee
track record of the team & company concerning warranty claims, transparency and trust
active community that gives support, exchanges ideas, further helps improve the whole ecosystem
It’s kinda obvious by now that they are not competing on price. That’s just not possible for them at this stage.
If it’s all about price it’s better you go with another product. Even the team openly suggests that. Not to agitate you. I’m sure they would love to be more affordable for everyone. They are working hard towards that goal. It simply will take them more time realistically.
For a desktop, it really ought to perform higher than 22000 in Geekbench CPU.
Edit: Looking closer at the video, it seems to show the unit was only able to sustain just shy of 94w So, likely that’s a bottle neck with the cooling.
So, base on that, AI or no AI compute, the EVO-X2’s performance is rather sub-par.
Even my 2 year-old laptop has a higher Cinebench scores (in r23 and 2024) than that shown in the video.
Let’s focus on what the Framework Desktop and the HP Z2 Mini G1a can do in the coming weeks / months.
There is a PCIE 4x4 on the Framework MB that is unused in their case. This is why their desktop case is problematic to begin with. You could a) oculink or b) 10GB ethernet there…