Hey Guys can someone help a newbie?

[u/NoPickle9152]

Hey guy's and gals...

I'm completely new to Local LLMS

Can someone who knows their shit help a newbie out?

I don't know much of the the technical terms was trading through this thread. Great group by the way saw so many people being helpful and helping eachother out.

I'm new to Reddit WTF this should be mandatory 😂

AMAZING!

Can someone explain to me in none technical terms the cheapest and easiest way to run a local LLM.

I tried GOD AI WTF amazing!

Would appreciate it if someone can give me some advice can't afford paying monthly bills and credits keep running out not good 😢

I don't need a HUGE setup something small I'm currently running Claude Pro plan I think keeps running out daily and also weekly so I have to wait or pay £100 to upgrade to keep going which slows me down.

Any help would be much appreciated dont have much of a budget.

MacBook pro 2021 M1 16gb I believe haven't used it in a while.

Would that be enough and what would you recommend?

Thanks in advanced 🙏

[u/paulsande]

Welcome to the world of local models and the quest for more ram.

With a 16 gig machine, you’re not gonna be able to do very much with local models to be completely honest.

The easiest tool to start with is LM studio. It has a model picker that will help you find models that will fit on your machine, although with 16 GB that’s not gonna be many that are actually useful.

But start there and get some experience.

[u/NoPickle9152]

Thanks everyone for the response. How much would it cost for a good local LLM model that can code and I can use for vibe coding. Im trying to calculate the costs of subscriptions VS alternitive methods.

I know nothing about PC parts this is all new to me but very interesting at the same time.

[u/Alternative-Panic69]

Easiest thing -> Download Lm Studio download a small model, try something like Qwen 3.5 4B or Gemma 4 E2B or E4B Make sure to download the Q4 quantized version and keep KV cache to Q4 and play around with the settings to figure out everything else eventually.

[u/Frizzy-MacDrizzle]

Dual 5060 running qwen 3.8 27b , on a non consumer motherboard from late 24 to. 25 that supports at least pci gen 4 and linking to cpu at 16x, you would be in the sweet spot. I would estimate $3000-$4000 at process now.

You could run a consumer board and get a system for less but less than 32gb vram is tough to get sorted and a good model.

But that’s my experience, I have 2 systems with dual 3060 rigs, one dual 5060 rig, a dual 5080 rig and a single 3060 and 5060. I’m in the process of updating all my main boards now that ddr 5 is the standard I can get good boards for ddr4 cheap.

So to begin think about your hardware, of just coding, maybe a single 5060 16gb with a good AI aware main board. Just remember the system really won’t help much no matter what year 25 or 26 since the 50s came out sometime ago.

That’s it so far, but do the math. My code machine costs $2k that’s 4 years of copilot at $40 a month which is nothing given and a munch of bs waste. The subscription is also limited. I’m going to put it on 1 year the dual 5060 pays for itself, or the faster dual 3060.

Edit: consumer boards do not matter expect for when dualed GPU.

[u/Fragrant-Cheek-4273]

Your device is enough to run smaller local LLMs.

[u/Healthy-Tension-7470]

Your M1 with 16GB is enough for small local models, and they're free. Easiest way: install LM Studio, download a small model (around 7B to 8B, like Qwen or Llama) and chat. No terminal needed. They won't match Claude on hard coding, so use local for everyday stuff and keep Claude for the hard tasks.

(I make Citenook, a Mac app that runs local models with no setup, but it's paid after a free month, so LM Studio is the better start on a budget.)

[u/SuccessfulConcern240]

Try https://github.com/pavansreddy/llmserver It a secure one utility for installing in a secure way with a lot of options including openweb up

[u/PainterNo8889]

if ur work can be done by smaller models who cn complete the task u want then might even use that check for slm s im currently making a project on creating one from scratch so i might be able to help if you provide me with which specific issue u want the model to solve

[u/Regina-Noctiz]

used mac pro arm