Guides, answers & tools

AI & Local LLMs

Local models, AI rigs and the tools that run them · page 4

Illustration of a person holding a phone with AI feature icons floating around it

Galaxy AI Came to Older Phones: What On-Device AI Really Means

Samsung pushed its flagship Galaxy AI features down to 2023 phones — a small move with a big lesson: AI is becoming a software add-on to hardware you own. What landed, what runs on-device, and the catch.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 7 min

Illustration of a startup rocket climbing a rising bar chart of coins with a European skyline

Mistral AI: How Europe's Frontier Lab Went From €6B to €21B+

A French startup barely a year old raised €600M at a $6B valuation — then multiplied it several times over. The honest story of Mistral, Europe's answer to OpenAI, and why its open-model, sovereign-AI bet matters.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 8 min

Illustration of choosing between two AI model badges over a laptop

Llama 4 vs Qwen3 for Local Use: The Honest Comparison

The quiet truth: for most home users, Qwen3 is the better default than Llama 4 Scout. Where each actually wins, the LMArena controversy, and the specific cases where Scout is worth it.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 7 min

Illustration of compressing a large block of AI experts into a smaller box

Llama 4 Quantized: GGUF Sizes & Memory, Explained Honestly

Quantization is the only reason Scout runs at home — but MoE means you shrink all 109B, not the 17B active. The honest GGUF memory ladder, the Q4_K_M sweet spot, and how low you can safely go.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 8 min

Illustration weighing a small and a very large AI model on a balance

Llama 4 Scout vs Maverick: Which to Actually Run Locally

They look like a small/large ladder, but they're built for different machines. Why Scout is the home model, why the smaller one has the bigger context, and the rare case for Maverick.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 7 min

Illustration of a person running a local Llama 4 model built of mixture-of-experts blocks

How to Run Llama 4 Locally in 2026 (The Honest Hardware Guide)

Llama 4 didn't dethrone Qwen3 or DeepSeek — but its MoE design and huge context make it worth understanding. What Scout and Maverick actually are, the memory trap that catches everyone, and what you really need to run it.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 10 min

Flat illustration of a person plugging a graphics card into a PC with a setup checklist, on a teal background

How to Run Local AI on an Intel Arc GPU in 2026 (the Vulkan Way)

Yes, Arc runs local LLMs well now — but skip the old IPEX-LLM guides (Intel archived it in January 2026). Here's the current, working path: Ollama or LM Studio on the Vulkan backend, step by step.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 7 min

Flat illustration of a person compressing a large cube into a small box, on a teal background

How to Quantize a Local LLM in 2026 (GGUF Q4 vs Q6 vs Q8 — and What You Lose)

Quantization is the trick that lets a 16GB card run models it has no business running. Here's how GGUF quant levels work, which one I default to, the memory math, and the honest quality trade — so you get the most model your VRAM can hold.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 9 min

Flat illustration of a person installing a graphics card into a PC with a screwdriver, on a teal background

How to Run Local AI on an AMD Radeon GPU in 2026 (ROCm vs Vulkan)

AMD went from 'buy Nvidia unless you enjoy pain' to 'this just works' in 2026. The two setup paths — ROCm for speed, Vulkan for ease — which to pick, and how to get a model on your Radeon's GPU tonight.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 8 min

Flat illustration of a person running a local AI model on a PC with a glowing graphics card, on a teal background

Best GPU for Running gpt-oss Locally in 2026 (20B and 120B)

OpenAI shipped two very different models. The 20B fits a normal 16GB card and flies; the 120B is an 80GB-class model you'll mostly rent. Here's the card I'd buy for each — VRAM-first, with current requirements cited.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 8 min

Flat illustration of a person weighing a local PC against a cloud server, on a teal background

Cloud vs Local GPU for AI in 2026: When Renting Actually Wins the Math

Renting vs owning a GPU for AI isn't a taste debate — it's a break-even calculation. Here's the honest 2026 math: what an hour in the cloud costs, what a card costs to own, and the crossover where each one wins.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 8 min

An NVIDIA RTX 3090 and RTX 4090 graphics card side by side, showing the size difference

Multi-GPU for Local AI in 2026: Two Used 3090s vs One RTX 5090

Two used RTX 3090s give you 48GB of VRAM for a third of a 5090's price — so is a dual-GPU build the smart move for local AI? The honest math, whether models really split across cards, and the power-and-complexity costs the sticker price hides.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 8 min

Flat illustration of a person at a PC running an AI assistant with a graphics card in the case, on a teal background

The Best GPU for Running Qwen3 Locally in 2026 (by Model Size)

Qwen3 isn't one model — it's a family from 4B to 235B, and the right GPU depends entirely on which you run. My VRAM-first map of every variant, the MoE trap that trips people up, and the used card I'd hand most people.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 8 min

An NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card (Palit GameRock)

Is the RTX 5090 Worth It for Local AI in 2026?

At ~$4,600 for 32GB of VRAM, the RTX 5090 is either the only card that makes sense — or a tax on headroom you'll never use. An honest, VRAM-first buy call with the cheaper alternatives priced in.

Aliteq Team · Sep 22 · 8 min

A hooded figure at a laptop in a dark room, illustrating the cybercrime operations Cisco Talos attributes to UAT-10147

A hacking crew's exploit notes were written by AI — and that should worry you more than the hack itself

Cisco Talos caught a Chinese-speaking group using AI to write its playbooks against 170,000 targets. The scary part isn't the bugs — it's that all of them are old and already patchable.

Aliteq Team · Aug 27 · 8 min

Nvidia DGX Spark AI mini desktop computer

perplexity built a free local AI agent — you just need a $4,700 computer to run it

Portable Computer promises zero token costs by running entirely on your own GPU. here's what that GPU actually costs you.

Aliteq Team · Aug 26 · 8 min

A node-based workflow automation editor displayed on a laptop screen

n8n's 'authenticated-only' RCE bug is scarier than it sounds — half your team can trigger it

CVE-2026-33696 needs zero exploits and zero admin rights — just permission to edit a workflow, which in most n8n setups is basically everyone.

Aliteq Team · Aug 25 · 6 min

A consumer graphics card installed in a desktop PC, the kind of hardware llama.cpp's MoE offloading flags are designed to stretch further

your GPU isn't too small for that 235B model — you're just using it wrong

A handful of llama.cpp flags let a 16GB card run models that shouldn't fit, and most people running local AI have never touched them.

Aliteq Team · Aug 25 · 7 min