Get ready for a rumble in this tiny jungle.

As you may already know, I’m drawn to hardware that is both adorable and functional, making mini PCs absolutely captivating. The latest offering from Framework presents an endearing small form factor, a practical carrying solution, and impressive specs tucked away in its tiny frame. However, I won’t recommend it merely as a gaming machine. According to Dave’s Framework Desktop review, this compact dynamo excels as a workstation focused on local AI processing, which is why I’m dubbing it the best AI mini PC.

Dave truly tested the capabilities of the Framework by pushing Alibaba’s massive 235 billion parameter AI model to utilize nearly all of its 128 GB of LPDDR5x-8000 RAM. Despite having only 4 GB of RAM remaining, he mentioned that the desktop handled the load effortlessly and continued to operate without a hitch.

However, while it excels at computation, its gaming performance isn’t quite up to par. Although advertised as a budget-friendly DIY gaming rig priced over $2,000, it doesn’t hold its ground as the primary attraction for gaming enthusiasts, especially when compared to integrated graphics of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 chip, which competes closely with Nvidia’s RTX 4060 GPU.

Thus, while the Framework Desktop isn’t designed to shine in gaming, it provides remarkable proficiency in executing AI tasks, making it a worthy contender in the mini PC arena.