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Comment by nrp | Hacker News Reader

Yep, the Mainboard is available as of today: https://frame.work/products/mainboard?v=FRANFG000A

$400 for a powerful SBC with consumer-level support and drivers is a pretty great price.

Sure but outside a laptop, laptop processors make much less sense. $400 gets you a motherboard and a desktop class processor that is significantly faster.

That desktop motherboard and CPU likely requires more power, more cooling, and a bigger case.

I can see the "Framework motherboard as SBC" idea catch on for everything from set-top boxes (Steam Machines could make a comeback this way) to a poor man's blade server.

It's better for SBC. Also laptop iGPU is better than desktop.

Being able to just buy something that works when you get it is a big plus IMO.

I’ve tried a few times in the last year and finding parts (that are actually available) for a sub- $500 small-form-factor system seems to be beyond my capabilities :)

You need to get on to aliexpress for stuff like that. Plenty of router type boxes in that price range. Even lenovo, Dell, etc. sell some of these labelled as IoT gateways.

Laptop processors make sense when space is at a premium, even if it's not a mobile device. But if space isn't an issue, desktop parts are usually a better choice; you can usually power limit desktop cpus to laptop levels if power usage or heat are a constraint.

"the average Core i5-1135G7 in our database is just as fast as the Core i5-10400H, Core i5-8300H, and Ryzen 7 3700U in multi-core benchmarks. The CPU acts even nicer when under single-core load, reaching similar heights as the Ryzen 7 5600X and Core i7-8700K."

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Core-i5-1135G7-Processor...

Does the mainboard require the keyboard and screen modules to function?

Or could one fully use it "standalone" providing they supply their own usb-c power, memory, storage + external keyboard+monitor?

edit - looks like it can. the 3d printable case is slick, wish it was sold in the store: https://frame.work/blog/mainboard-availability-and-open-sour...

It works fully standalone. Technically the only required items beyond the Mainboard itself are DRAM and a power source (USB-C or a Framework Laptop Battery).

Any word on when the batteries will be available? They've been "coming soon" for a while. I imagine there's a supply chain issue behind that -- not faulting you guys -- but it's kind of painful still not being able to replace the one part of my laptop that's guaranteed to wear out.

They are actually physically at our warehouse. The constraint has been the fulfillment logic to ensure they don't ship out from the warehouse by a method that allows air shipment. This is in progress, but in the meantime, we can manually take battery orders (an order containing only a battery) through our support form.

> The constraint has been the fulfillment logic to ensure they don't ship out from the warehouse by a method that allows air shipment.

Best of luck with that. I know with UPS even the Ground services include the possibility of going via air if the destination is even slightly disconnected from the US mainland (and I distinctly recall having to program ERP/WMS logic for blocking ORM-D shipments entirely to the Catalina Islands' zip code because UPS would accept the ORM-D-marked package, try to load it on a plane for that last hop, and then send us nastygrams about us being the ones somehow at fault for it); I don't think FedEx is any different in that regard.

It's definitely possible to ship batteries via air, but it has to be marked air cargo only and the fees are probably too steep to be worthwhile unless you're shipping a bunch at a time.

This inspired me to start tinkering on my framework laptop. Is there an integrated power switch onboard somewhere? I couldn't find one so I still needed to use the fingerprint reader connected to the input cover.

In the top left corner of the Mainboard there is a small button labelled "SW1".

When you select the different models of mainboard the order of the "Included", "Specs", and "Additional Information" options switch places. Just a minor UI thing.

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