Using the repair-friendly Framework 13 laptop chassis, I've tested the low-end x86 option (a Ryzen AI 5 340 Mainboard), the fastest RISC-V option (DC-ROMA II), and today I'm publishing results from the only Arm Mainboard, the MetaComputing AI PC, which has a 12-core Arm SoC and up to 32 GB of soldered-on RAM.



My Framework 13 has run on x86, RISC-V, and now Arm, making it something of a 'Ship of Theseus'.

Jeff Geerling is a software developer, author, and open-source contributor known for his expertise in infrastructure automation and Drupal development. Readers can learn about DevOps practices, Ansible automation, and web development with Drupal. With blog posts, tutorials, and open-source projects, Jeff Geerling shares  insights and best practices for building and managing web infrastructure.

Jeff Geerling

Jeff Geerling reviews the MetaComputing AI PC Mainboard, an Arm-based mainboard for the Framework 13 laptop featuring Cix's P1 CP8180 SoC with 12 cores and up to 32 GB of soldered LPDDR5 RAM. The board runs Ubuntu 25.04 with full hardware support, including the Mali G720 Immortalis iGPU for Vulkan/OpenGL. Benchmarks show competitive multi-core performance but weaker single-core scores compared to Apple Silicon, and it falls short of Framework's own Ryzen AI 5 340 mainboard in both single and multi-core performance. Gaming via FEX x86 emulation on Steam is possible but choppy and largely unplayable. At $550 (pushed higher by the DRAM crisis), the board is recommended only for Arm enthusiasts and developers, not general users seeking value.

An Arm Mainboard for the Framework Laptop