My Framework Investment Should NOT Have Worked Out

According to the Framework CEO on the Linus Tech Tips video about this thing [1], they tried and AMD assigned an engineer on getting modular memory to work and decided it's not possible. Unless there's another company out there shipping this CPU with replaceable memory, I'll believe them. Even with LPCAMM, physics just doesn't work out. Of course, there are plenty of slower desktops you can buy where all the memory can be swapped out. If you want a repairable desktop like that, you're not stuck with Framework in the same way you would be with laptops. You'll probably struggle to get the same memory bandwidth to make full use of AMD's chips, though. [1]: [this video]

As stated previously, the sockets reduce signal integrity, which doesn't necessarily make them "bad," but is why Framework wasn't able to used socketed ram to maximize the potential of this CPU. This sort-of-interview of Nirav Patel (ceo of framework) explains in a bit more detail: [this video] Basically, they need to use LPDDR5X memory, which isn't available in socketed form, because of signal integrity reasons. Which means you won't see an improvement if you solder your ram directly, I think mostly because your home soldering job will suffer signal integrity issues, but also because your RAM isn't LPCAMM and isn't spread across a 256 bit bus.

I agree, but here's a quote from the CEO explaining (to some degree) the choice: “So we did actually ask AMD about this the first time they told us about Strix Halo. It was literally our first question: ‘How do we get modular memory? We are Framework after all.’ And they didn’t say no actually, they did assign one of their technical architects to really really go deep on this—they ran simulations, they ran studies, and they just determined it’s not possible with Strix Halo to do LPCAMM. The signal integrity doesn’t work out because of how that memory’s fanning out over the 256-bit bus.” (from [this video] via [link] )