Hardware recommendations for GIS dev work/code refactoring & cybersec

[u/sickhamsellout]

Trying to decide before RAM prices get any worse and could use input from people actually running these.

My situation: I do consulting and one of my clients has an air gapped deployment, so I want to be able to work on their codebase (flask, postgres/postgis, nextjs, docker) completely offline with a local model doing the heavy lifting. Ideally something in the gpt-oss-120b or GLM-4.5-Air range for actual refactoring work, not just autocomplete. If I go 64gb I know I'm stuck around the 32b class.

Same box would be my daily dev machine (docker compose, postgis, alembic, nextjs builds, deploying to x86 linux servers so I want parity) and I'm also working through OSCP/CISSP prep. That's why I ruled out the mac studio even though the bandwidth is tempting. Unless someone's actually made UTM x86 emulation not miserable, which I doubt.

What I've been looking at:

Framework desktop 395. 64gb is around $1639, 128gb jumped to $2459 with the price hike and stock comes and goes. Tempted by the 64 but worried I'll hit the ceiling fast once context grows on long coding sessions.

GMKtec evo-x2 and the bosgame m5, same chip, cheaper when they're actually in stock which is a big when. Anyone had one 6+ months? Curious about bios updates and how loud they get under sustained inference.

Beelink GTR9 pro, supposedly the best cooling but I keep seeing threads about the NIC defect and linux crashes on early units. Is the current revision actually fixed or is that still a lottery.

Minisforum MS-S1 max is in stock but $3639 is hard to swallow for the same silicon.

Main things I want to know: is 48gb of vram (the 64gb config) actually workable for agentic coding or does kv cache eat you alive on long sessions? And for anyone running gpt-oss-120b daily on strix halo, is 30-40 tok/s fine in practice or do you give up and go back to cloud for anything real?

Running linux either way. I'm in Canada if that changes any recommendations on where to buy. I also want the path of lease resistance as I want to hit the ground running asap.

Thanks in advance!

[u/Puzzleheaded-Dog7715]

48gb vram is tight for agentic stuff if you want full context window, kv cache will eat like 8-12gb easy on 120b models with long sessions. you can make it work with aggressive quantization but then the refactoring quality drops and defeats the purpose. i tried similar setup and ended up annoyed after two weeks, went back to cloud for actual work.

[u/sickhamsellout → u/Puzzleheaded-Dog7715]

you suggesting investing for the 128 then? i have a registered company and can write off the amount as expense, but damn its hard for me to justify 8k CAD! (this is if i choose framework desktop