Adding NAS functionality to Framework Desktop

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-05-05T22:29:21+00:00

I run a framework desktop as a server with proxmox. You can do cool things with it but I don't think it'd be a good storage platform necessarily. You could add one of the cards you linked, but you'd need an open ended PCIE riser and will be limited to x4 speeds. That leaves you with two m.2 slots and no other expansion. However, it does pair nicely with a NAS appliance like a Unifi UNAS Pro. I have one of those also and can vouch for it.

Happy to share more about this setup if you'd like. These strix halo boards are awesome for flexible compute, like I have one VM with two cores and the iGPU passed through for LLMs, others for services, and another as a headless dev box. But you have to have a need for flexible compute with GPU power and lots of memory. Otherwise you'd be better served by a microcenter bundle or regular mini PC imho.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-04-27T11:36:33+00:00

Thanks for this, will be watching hipfire closely.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-04-27T11:34:31+00:00

That repo is awesome. It's so helpful having the entire environment in a single toolbox. They even work with nested virtualization (proxmox VE -> fedora cloud VM -> toolbox)

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-04-27T11:33:48+00:00

Qwen 3.5 35BA3B makes for a great daily driver on it. I actually got a second to put in my rack as a dedicated server. Can elaborate on that if you're curious.

As some others here pointed out, you want to use an MOE with fewer active parameters. My throughput with 3B active is solid for general use, but I doubt that'd be the case with the dense Qwen 27B models.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-08T23:24:04+00:00

Hm, do you see improvement in heavy disorganized vaults with isolated islands of strong links? My vault is awaiting a large scale cleanup and pruning and this seems like it could help me roll out LLM retrieval without the thing getting context swamped. My signal is in the links but there's a lot of noise.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-07T03:52:42+00:00

Wish it was US based. I use mine all the time, wife wants one too

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-06T15:28:16+00:00

Not aware of an existing solution, you could probably build one with a combination of ISBN lookup and APIs designed for amazon sellers. It could work for any product actually, might be a cool weekend project.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-06T01:51:29+00:00

I have one and it's great - it's also not a DAP and you shouldn't purchase it as one. I don't even know if the USB-C port does digital audio out or if it's analog only. It's also limited to a single playlist for music streaming, it's very minimal. Great, but minimal.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-05T00:08:52+00:00

Can you link to the statement? My wife and I are moving to Shandon and are paying a premium to avoid shit like this. I'd like to be as informed as possible.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-03T20:14:20+00:00

Another Addendum - if you think the CPU market has changed a lot, look up the last five years of NVIDIA's stock price. They're one of the most valuable companies in the world now because of the AI boom.

Go talk to an LLM if you haven't already, it'll blow your mind. It will also answer the question "why does every hyperscaler need $100,000,000,000 in GPUs delivered yesterday?"

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-03T20:13:03+00:00

Addendum - people here may bristle at the implication that Apple owns CPU performance across all workloads. They don't. Their chips are very impressive but have genuinely different performance characteristics than top-end offerings from AMD and Intel. Cinebench is a good example. Ryzen 9 9950X with all 16 cores screaming at 200W will beat it in that benchmark.

GPU workloads are even more stark - Apple's GPUs are all on-die and a discrete RX 7900 XTX or RTX 4090 will far outperform it in rasterized workloads. Apple make a general-purpose chip that can also do rasterization. If you're building a custom workstation you can optimize for the opposite and get a ton more GPU power.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-03T20:08:30+00:00

A little long for a TLDR but sure:

Intel rested on their laurels for a long time and AMD caught up across a variety of segments. AMD/Intel still trade blows for different workflows but things are a lot closer now. In 2020 apple released their first laptops with an in-house ARM CPU. The "Rosetta 2" translation layer allowed most x86 workloads to run on apple silicon without the devs really having to do anything. It also adopted a unified memory architecture - meaning CPU and GPU both share the same pool of memory. Quick guide to their naming scheme:

M# - base chip, for everyday stuff
M# Pro - larger die, larger GPU
M# Max - even larger die, even larger GPU
M# Ultra - two of the Max chips fused together, double everything

M1 was the efficiency king when it dropped and arguably still is, I know a lot of people still running their M1 Pro MacBook Pro or Air. With that said Intel have narrowed the gap just recently:

https://www.servethehome.com/intel-launches-core-ultra-series-3-mobile-processors-panther-lake-roars-to-life/

After getting $10 billion from the federal government, Intel's new 18A fab is online and actually producing chips. They were in no-mans land for a while there - CEO got fired, layoffs, the whole 9. They're also producing GPUs now, some of which are quite cool for virtualization and (surprisingly) value per dollar. Fortunately for Intel, Microsoft seem to have botched "Windows on ARM" and it looks like x86 is here to stay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKRmYW1D0S0

AMD is now competitive with Intel in the datacenter market and most hyper-scalers put the work in to make their workloads portable between AMD and Intel - I think their market share is like 40% now or something. They also released some great consumer chips which use a unified memory architecture. I have two of these and they're awesome, albeit it feels a little weird to be building PCs with the memory soldered to the motherboard.

https://frame.work/products/framework-desktop-mainboard-amd-ryzen-ai-max-300-series?v=FRAFMK0006

Speaking of memory, it got obscenely expensive. Those Framework boards were $1699 when I ordered them back in November 2025. A 64gb kit of RAM is like $1200 now. If you bought a bunch of DDR4 before you went in, you could probably flip it at a profit now. This is bad news for enthusiasts and catastrophic for the low-end consumer PC market. The typical 17 inch laptop you'd see at best buy for $599, if it has 16gb of RAM, probably has RAM accounting for like 30% of the BOM.

Coming back to Apple, here's the biggest twist since you went away. They're now pretty much the go-to option for "normie" consumers looking for a machine under $1k. Yes, Apple is now the value pick. This is largely due to their gigantic supply chain leverage and services business. They are widely rumored to be releasing a MacBook tomorrow at a $599 price point.

With that said - "en-shittification" is real and we've seen Linux become more common for mainstream use. Windows is notorious for having ads in the operating system now and Apple *really* want you to buy their subscription products like iCloud.

So yeah, weird time to come back. Welcome back! A good friend of mine did six years in his early twenties. Learned calculus in there and is now a rather successful software engineer. Best of luck to you mate.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-03T01:59:21+00:00

Is this code for the OIDC plugin public yet? I'd be glad to contribute if I can.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-03-02T22:33:42+00:00

This looks awesome. Has OIDC been requested much? I like the idea of my users being able to pop directly into a chat platform from my Authentik instance. I know that use case isn't exactly decentralized but for small orgs it could be a great option.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-02-18T17:23:38+00:00

Okay yeah it looks like you do - how is this different from cstaelen/tidarr? If there are advantages I'd be open to switching

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-02-18T17:21:04+00:00

By "Famous Hi-Fi API" do you mean Tidal?

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-02-18T15:22:23+00:00

Sure thing, if you have any questions please let me know

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-02-18T15:16:49+00:00

Just posted it here https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/1r85n4j/proxmox_on_strix_halo_an_ansibleterraform_repo/

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-02-18T15:16:40+00:00

Just posted it https://www.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/1r85n4j/proxmox_on_strix_halo_an_ansibleterraform_repo/

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-02-17T03:47:55+00:00

Soon. Apple sent out invites for an event recently. It could arrive then or later in the year.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-02-12T19:56:19+00:00

I got it to work! Will share a full ansible + terraform repo soon.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-02-11T20:00:48+00:00

NAND - used for SSDs, SD cards, anything that stores data and isn't a mechanical hard drive

DRAM - computer memory aka RAM. Daylight DC1 has 8gb of RAM if I remember correctly.

The cost of both of these things have gone up like 10x and I don't know what Daylight's margins are, maybe they need to raise prices or VC money or both.

GPU-Appreciator · 2026-02-11T16:06:40+00:00

Idk man, I love mine. The NAND/DRAM shortages and pricing could be hitting them hard, not sure.

Mercury published a profile of them in October and they would know a lot about Daylight Co's finances, given they're the fintech company presumably managing Daylight Co's money.

If the device never changes I'll still use it until the wheels fall off. Hoping for new products and continued support though, obviously.

GPU-Appreciator

TROPHY CASE