I’ve been pricing out components for my first new build in 20 years. (I’ve bought many ebay servers and a few mini PCs in between).
The parts are around $2k. But then I look at the amd ai max+ 395 PCs that are out or coming out shortly and I think I might be buying an already obsolete platform. For the same price I’d get 16 cores and over 2x the memory bandwidth.
My new computer’s got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box
You say you’ve had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away, man, it’s an antique!
– Weird Al Yankovic, It’s all about the Pentiums (1999)Chasing the latest and greatest is an old problem and it’s never going to be solved. At some point, you buy the PC or parts which do what you want to do at that time for a reasonable price (however you define “reasonable”). One advantage offered by buying parts is the ability to upgrade piecemeal and keep up with growing system requirements over time, without the need to replace everything at once. My own PC of Theseus has been upgraded piecemeal over the last 15 years and runs modern games just fine. My wife’s PC has been on an upgrade treadmill for close on 25 years. Sure, the only thing which is actually that old is the case (she loves her case), but we’ve been able to keep up with modern hardware requirements while spreading the upgrade costs out over time.
No, parts make the whole. If you find a pre built that’s better then the parts, there’s a reason. Maybe an economic one, which will probably be a short window if true
The CPU referenced is BGA only, so it has to be bundled with MB. The platform only has soldered down memory.
So the minimal package is a motherboard with cpu, compelling gpu, and memory all down. Given the platform fits comfortably within USB-PD, then it’s pretty much a slam dunk to have that motherboard have USB-PD down and skip the PSU…
The only things that naturally make sense to be maybe reasonable to be customizable are the storage, cooling, case, and maybe a solution to upgrade the GPU with a beefier discrete one.
As we push the physics more and more, systems are going to have little choice but to be a chunk of ‘all in one’, with the traditional build flexibility just no longer being feasible if you want top performance.
In terms of piecewise, the system builders get insane volume discounts, so it’s not a given that pre-built naturally is more expensive despite it technically being a superset of the parts and efforts that go into building yourself.
It’s not the pre built that makes current desktops obsolete. It’s the quad chanel ddr5 8000 in the AI Max+ platform.
I have nothing against AI Max 395+ systems. I’m picking up a Framework Desktop to play around with larger models than are practical on consumer GPUs myself.
But they’re targeting a specific niche. They’re currently compelling for that niche. But running large AI models isn’t the only thing people do with a computer.
EDIT: Say you want a machine that can render frames quickly for a video game. The CPU is probably also wanting to hit the memory and is competing for bandwidth. The game won’t be written to gain much from the GPU having fast access to a load of memory.
And you have a maximum of 128GB, which is large for a GPU, but it’s shared, and nothing that amazing in terms of memory for the CPU. You can get motherboards that will take more RAM if your concern is giving the CPU a lot of memory rather than the GPU.
Say you want a machine that can render frames quickly for a video game.
Minisforum is coming out with an AI max+ with a full PCIe slot for GPUs.
Depends on what you’re building. If you’re looking for an overpowered SFF type of platform then yeah those AI Max+ builds may be what you want. Just keep in mind a lot of those are integrated motherboards (non-upgradable parts) and usually have minimal storage options and slots for add-in cards.
The other reason those AI Max+ PCs get a lot of press is that there’s still not a whole ton of CPUs with capable NPU built-in aka Windows Copilot+ compatible. AI Max+ happens to be one of those. (whether NPU is actually useful right now beyond Copilot+ is a whole other discussion)
So if you actually want a more extensible build out and don’t care about this Copilot+ stuff then traditional builds / non SFF builds are probably still more in line with what you want.
Just keep in mind a lot of those are integrated motherboards (non-upgradable parts)
Yeah that’s what bothers me. But a 256GB upgrade on AM5 is $800 and extremely slow compared to the 128GB non upgradeable on Max+. So really it comes down to 1pcie slot vs 3 or 4. If there’s a usb4 to PCIe adapter, even that’s not a limitation.
I think the NPU is generally worthless but the 128GB of fast ram makes local LLM like deep seek feasible. ( I watch a lot of level1techs on YouTube. )
The concerns you brought up are the same I have!
the amd ai max+ 395 PCs that are out
Most of these are SFF and don’t have much (if any) capability to fit HDDs inside. They’re not the right choice if you want a lot of bulk storage in a single box.
Imo a separate nas build is better for bulk storage. It’s part of why I think I’m buying a dinosaur to get a full ATX case when a SFF AI max would run circles around it.
Just saying I agree, I use a USB-attached HDD enclosure because it’s trivial to have a lot of hot swap HDD in that sort of product, and even the moderately slower USB-3 that some use is generally up to the task to keeping up with a handful of spinning platters.
I only built my current system because of a special deal at my employer where you could buy a 4090 for 400 dollars, and this was only a couple of months after they came out.
Before that deal happened I was realizing that pre built was going to be cheaper for the same stuff. However finding a pre built without an expensive high end GPU that could be credibly upgraded to have a 4090 want in the cards.
