22 articles · newest first
I priced out every rung of the local-AI hardware ladder this week. One tier is quietly the best deal on the list, and one isn't worth it at any price.
Ravi Malhotra · 3d ago · 9 min
$501 off and two free games sounds great until you hit the line that says 16GB of RAM — and fixing that yourself right now costs almost as much as the discount.
Nadia Rahman · 3d ago · 7 min
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.
Lena Fischer · 5d ago · 7 min
Modders in China are selling RTX 3080s with double the stock VRAM for about $445. Here's the real math on whether that's a shortcut or a way to fry your PC.
Ravi Malhotra · 6d ago · 7 min
The RTX 5050 is the cheap pick and the RX 9070 is the overall pick. Only one of them still makes sense a year from now.
Ravi Malhotra · 6d ago · 7 min
A new hardware breakdown puts real numbers on the two components most local-AI buying guides skip entirely — and skimping on either turns a snappy agent into a 10-minute wait.
Lena Fischer · Aug 19 · 7 min
the 16GB version is up 88% since launch. the 8GB version barely moved. here's the real math if you're buying for local AI, not just gaming.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 16 · 7 min
The RTX 5060 Ti got hit hardest, the RTX 5080 barely moved, and that flipped the value math. Here's what actually makes sense, card by card, in August 2026.
Lena Fischer · Aug 14 · 9 min
The RTX PRO 6000 nearly doubled in eight months. Here's what your money actually buys against every real alternative for running big models at home.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 14 · 8 min
The card was reportedly finished and sitting with board partners — and Nvidia shelved the whole Super lineup anyway.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 9 · 7 min
the model that made headlines for being nearly free to rent turns out to be one of the most expensive things you could try to self-host
Lena Fischer · Aug 4 · 6 min
The AMD Instinct MI50 32GB sells used for $120-250 with more VRAM and bandwidth than most 2026 consumer cards. AMD just made owning one a lot riskier.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 7 min
Arc B580, RX 9060 XT 16GB, and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB are all fighting for the same budget local-AI buyer in 2026. Real prices and real bandwidth numbers settle it.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 6 min
GDDR7 modules and TSMC wafer costs just pushed every RTX 50 card higher this week — but the ugliest number isn't the one everyone's quoting.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 6 min
The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the CPU every gaming build guide wants you to buy right now. If you're building for local AI too, here's where that money should actually go instead.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 7 min
South Korea is the canary. TSMC wafer costs and $20 memory chips just pushed the RTX 5090 to 2.5x its sticker price — here's the actual buy-or-skip math for running AI models at home.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 8 min
24GB of old VRAM versus 16GB of new, low-power silicon — I ran the real math on what each one costs, up front and over a year.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 6 min
Phi-4 Mini, Gemma 3, and Llama 3.2 all claim to fit — I checked which one actually leaves room to breathe.
Lena Fischer · Aug 4 · 6 min
Same 16GB of VRAM, wildly different price and software maturity in August 2026 — I ran the actual numbers.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 6 min
Four real paths to running a 70B-parameter model on your own hardware or by the hour — priced out with actual 2026 numbers.
Lena Fischer · Aug 4 · 8 min
A third price hike in one year is reportedly coming for the RTX 50 series — and if you're buying VRAM for local AI, not frame rates, the calculation isn't the same as 'wait for a sale.'
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 4 · 7 min
The $279 RX 9050 looks like a normal budget GPU launch, until you notice AMD quietly brought back a 64-bit, 4GB memory config nobody's shipped since 2022.
Ravi Malhotra · Aug 1 · 6 min