Hardware Reviews

The GMKtec NucBox G9 is a compact mini PC marketed as a 4-bay NAS solution. It packs four M.2 NVMe slots into a sub-1U chassis with an Intel N150 processor and 12GB of soldered LPDDR5, making it appealing for homelab enthusiasts who want dense SSD storage in a tiny footprint. At around $210, the specs-per-dollar ratio is compelling. On paper, it looked like the perfect low-power Jellyfin host. In practice, the fan developed bearing noise and died after less than a year of lightly loaded continuous operation, and the device had already developed a well-documented reputation for thermal issues before mine failed. The plastic chassis doesn’t help with heat dissipation, and the overall build quality feels budget-appropriate—fine at this price point, but not confidence-inspiring for 24/7 server duty. Not recommended for always-on use.

The Framework Desktop crams workstation-class silicon into a 4.5-liter chassis that barely occupies more desk space than a large book. Mine is the top-end configuration: an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (Strix Halo) with 16 Zen 5 cores, 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units, and 128GB of unified LPDDR5X memory soldered to the package. It runs Linux exclusively and handles everything I throw at it as a daily driver. The expansion card system carried over from Framework’s laptops is a better idea on a laptop than a desktop, and the I/O is thinner than I’d like. But the build experience was genuinely enjoyable. The 128GB of unified memory means I can run 70-billion-parameter models that won’t fit on even a high-end discrete GPU—slowly, but they run. The PCIe slot is a baffling design miss, and Linux software support for the Strix Halo platform is still catching up to the hardware. But even with those caveats, this is the most compelling small form factor workstation I’ve used.

The Framework Laptop 16 is the most upgradeable laptop I’ve ever used, and it’s not close. Six expansion card slots give you genuinely flexible I/O. The swappable GPU module is revolutionary for a laptop—nothing else on the market lets you upgrade your graphics without buying a whole new machine. The display is excellent. The keyboard is one of the best I’ve used on a laptop. The build process is more involved than Framework’s Desktop and takes real time, but nothing about it is difficult. Build quality is excellent, the design is solid, and you come away from the assembly understanding exactly how your machine works. That’s worth something. It is also, to be clear, not a portable machine in any meaningful sense. This is a desktop replacement that happens to fold shut.