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Comment by porphyra | Hacker News Reader

The $449 Intel 1340p or AMD Ryzen mainboard seems to be attractively priced against other barebones mini PCs and the Mac Mini too!

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Absolutely. We really hope to see the secondary market emerge as well. As Framework Laptop owners upgrade to new Mainboards, we want to make sure those old Mainboards either get reused by the same person, or resold to another user who can make use of it as a PC.

I have old laptops that would be good enough to be a server, and low power enough that they probably should replace my current home server. Just a shame they don't have a Framework like backing for them!

I think the only thing I didn't see was larger clickpads on the 16" laptop. I'm assuming this is all modular enough that once it comes along, I can just replace the wrist pad.

For $300 you can get an i5-13400 and a board though.

You can buy this combo for $450, maybe for $400, but I don't see how you can get it for $300. The processor alone seems to go for >$240, and I don't see how you can hope to get a compatible motherboard for <$60.

It is nevertheless a laptop part, which compromises performance for battery consumption (with much lower clocks). You might not want this if you value performance to the dollar more than some wall power.

In this form factor, the use of laptop grade parts is quite common. So, if you want a small PC, then you’re already going to be comfortable with this level of performance. In this case, reuse of a framework main board is a great option.

I've setup a handful of MinusForum 5900HX boxes the past couple years, and thet've been surprisingly capable. I'm using one for my homeserver (docker, wireguard, pihole, etc) for about a year. They can definitely be OP for what they might be used for and more than enough for typical facebook, email, youtube content consumption.

Definitely happy to see Framework offering 3D models for retired boards and an upgrade path. At this pricing, probably worth consideration for a new build even. Been wanting to pull the trigger on a home lab kubernetes setup, and the RPIs I have just don't cut it. These would definitely fit the bill.

And that model is already overkill for typical office usage. MinisForum UM350 is very snappy for browsing, office software, YouTube etc. 16GB of memory and very reasonable pricing.

Oh completely agreed... One was for a friend who is using it as a backup dev box, and the other was for my MiL, whose computer broke, and I hadn't set it up as my home server yet.

Mainly stating, that a laptop cpu from the past couple gen are definitely nothing to turn a nose up at in terms of ability. The 5900HX outpaces an older i7-4790K and uses a fraction of the wall power and space. Especially, when they're headless in a closet.

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