When Framework debuted its Desktop earlier this week, most attendees of its San Francisco event didn't get to tear the machine all the way down to the studs. There's an exception, however: iFixit posted a full teardown of the 4.5L Mini-ITX machine, removing the cooler and showing off the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, also known as Strix Halo.
Teardown tech Shahram Mokhtari removed the four Phillips screws to free the large cooler (co-engineered by Framework, Cooler Master, and Noctua) to reveal the die shot everyone was waiting for. (You can see it around 8:38 in the embedded video).
Strix Halo hasn't changed; we've seen the die shots before. But here, we do see that the massive, seemingly custom cooling solution is a unit that covers both the processor and the RAM, which is soldered to the motherboard. Framework CEO Nirav Patel wrote in a blog that Framework "spent months working with AMD to explore ways around this but ultimately determined that it wasn’t technically feasible to land modular memory at high throughput with the 256-bit memory bus."
To cool the chip and RAM, Framework isn't using a standard desktop CPU cooler. It attaches to a 120 mm fan; you can pick from options from Cooler Master or Noctua, or pick your own. This is an engineering board, so it's possible changes will come to the final product, but it seems unlikely that there will be an option for someone to put Strix Halo under water cooling (but if you figure it out, get in touch).
Mokhtari was able to remove the board after opening the case and removing the front and side panels. He removed the fan from the cooler first and unplugged the board. He did, however, have to unscrew more of the case than expected, possibly due to this unit being an engineering sample. The Flex ATX PSU stayed in the case the whole time.
The Framework desktop is available for pre-order now and is set to release in Q3 of this year. The base model, with a Ryzen AI Max 385 and 32GB of RAM, starts at $1,099, while the top-end machine with a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 128GB of RAM begins at $1,999. Framework is only doing "DIY" editions here, so you'll have to get your own storage drive and bring your own operating system (the company is calling it "the easiest PC you'll ever build"). The mainboard on its own will be available from $799.
