Guides, answers & tools

AI & Local LLMs

Local models, AI rigs and the tools that run them · page 10

A small ESP32-S3 microcontroller development board wired up on a workbench

someone crammed a working AI language model onto a $10 chip. it writes actual stories

No cloud, no Wi-Fi, no GPU — just a cheap microcontroller quietly telling itself bedtime stories, one token at a time.

Aliteq Team · Jul 31 · 6 min

A graphics card showing VRAM memory chips

how much VRAM do you need to run AI models? The simple rule, by model size

VRAM is the single number that decides which AI models you can run. Here's the simple rule of thumb, a size-by-size table, and a calculator to check any model against your card.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

A person weighing a decision at a computer

is running AI locally actually worth it in 2026? An honest answer

Local AI is private, free-per-use, and offline — but the cloud is more capable and needs no hardware. Here's a straight answer on when running your own AI is worth it and when it isn't.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

A humanoid robot reading, representing AI reasoning

how to run DeepSeek on your own computer, free — and which version you can actually fit

DeepSeek's reasoning models are free and open — but the full one needs a datacenter. The good news: the distilled versions run great on a normal PC. Here's how to run DeepSeek locally, and which size fits your hardware.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

Abstract flowing digital art visualization

how to run Stable Diffusion locally and make AI images for free on your own PC

Generate unlimited AI images on your own computer — no Midjourney subscription, no per-image fees, nothing sent to a server. Here's exactly how to set it up, and what graphics card you need.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

Ollama vs LM Studio: which one should you actually use to run AI locally?

Both are free, both run the same open models, and since mid-2025 both have a desktop app. The real split now: LM Studio if you want to browse, tweak and chat; Ollama if you want a model that other apps can call. Here's the full comparison, including speed.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 10 min

the best free AI models you can run at home in 2026, ranked by what your hardware can handle

Open, free AI models have gotten shockingly good. Here are the best ones to run locally — for every size of computer, from a laptop to a 24GB graphics card.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

An AI chat interface running locally on a computer

how to get a free, private ChatGPT alternative that runs entirely on your own computer

You don't need a subscription or an account to have a capable AI assistant. Free, open models running on your own PC give you private, offline, unlimited AI — here's how to set one up.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

A person setting up AI software on a computer

how to run a local AI model on your own PC in 2026 — a genuinely simple beginner's guide

Running your own AI model at home sounds technical. It isn't — you can be chatting with a private, offline AI in about five minutes with one free app. Here's exactly how.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

China's Kimi K3 was reportedly trained on smuggled NVIDIA Blackwell chips — around both countries' controls

Moonshot AI's frontier model, the biggest open-weight model ever, was allegedly trained on NVIDIA Blackwell hardware acquired around both US export controls and China's own import restrictions. The compute-smuggling story behind the model.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

what hardware runs Google's Gemma 3? the VRAM math for every size, from a laptop to a 24GB card

Gemma 3 comes in sizes from tiny to 27B, and each has a very different hardware requirement. Here's exactly what you need to run each one — and which fits the card you already have.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

the best laptop for running local AI in 2026 is a MacBook — and it's not close, for one reason

Gaming laptops have fast GPUs, but they cap out at 16GB of VRAM. A MacBook Pro's unified memory goes to 128GB. For running AI models on the go, memory wins.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

A high-end multi-GPU AI workstation build

the local AI workstation that runs 70B models: the ~$3,500 build, and the smarter way to spend it

To run a 70-billion-parameter model at home you need ~48GB of VRAM. Here's the build that gets you there — and why two cheaper cards beat one expensive one.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

A budget gaming and AI PC build with a graphics card

the best local AI PC you can build for under $1,000 in 2026 — every part, and why

You don't need a $3,000 rig to run real local AI. For about a grand you can build a machine that runs 7B models fast and 14B models comfortably. Here's the exact parts list.

Aliteq Team · Jul 30 · 9 min

An electricity meter representing the running cost of local AI

what does it actually cost to run a local LLM? the electricity bill nobody calculates

Everyone talks about the GPU price, but a local AI rig has a running cost too. It's smaller than you fear — but if you're in Europe, it's not nothing. Here's the real math.

Aliteq Team · Jul 28 · 9 min

A cloud GPU workstation for fine-tuning AI models

the best cloud GPU for fine-tuning an LLM costs about a dollar — here's the one to rent and why

Fine-tuning sounds expensive until you realize you can rent the perfect GPU for it by the hour. For small models a 4090 does it for pennies; for bigger jobs an A100 is the workhorse. Here's the cheapest path.

Aliteq Team · Jul 28 · 9 min

A data center GPU for running large AI models

the cheapest way to run Llama 70B isn't buying two GPUs — it's renting one big one for a couple dollars

A dual-GPU rig to run Llama 70B costs $2,000+. But you can rent an A100 that holds it for around a dollar an hour. For anything but constant use, the cloud wins big.

Aliteq Team · Jul 28 · 9 min

A scale weighing cloud versus local computing

should you rent a cloud GPU or buy your own for AI? the break-even is simpler than you think

Everyone frames it as cloud vs local like it's a religion. It's just arithmetic: how many hours will you actually use it? For a $1,000 used 3090 vs ~$0.22/hr on-demand rental, the answer is about 4,500 hours.

Aliteq Team · Jul 28 · 9 min