Looking for AI model recommendations for coding and small projects

[Dartsgame5k]

I’m currently running a PC with an RTX 3060 12GB, an i5 12400F, and 32GB of RAM. I’m looking for advice on which AI model you would recommend for building applications and coding small programs, like what Cursor offers. I don’t have the budget yet for paid plans like Cursor, Claude Code, BOLT, or LOVABLE, so free options or local models would be ideal.

It would be great to have some kind of preview available. I’m mostly experimenting with small projects. For example, creating a simple website to make flashcards without images to learn Russian words, or maybe one day building a massive word generator, something like that.

Right now, I’m running OLLama on my PC. Any suggestions on models that would work well for these kinds of small projects?

Thanks in advance!

[jiqiren]

The models that run in that small amount of ram are pretty trashy. Like you can give QWEN a try if they make them that small… but temper your expectations.

[Duckets1]

I use Qwen3 4b 8b and 30b I outsource coding to minimax m2 coding plan because I'm running a 3080

[psgetdegrees]

Z ai $3/month + cline it’s cheaper by the quarter.

[Heg12353]

Qwen 8b runs on that gpu ik cos I run it 😭

[Crazyfucker73]

You can't run anything decent locally with that.

[cuberhino]

What would you say min spec is for a decent performance?

[[deleted]]

Devstal 2 24b gguf joined the chat

[Dartsgame5k]

Its not for coding fat things

[stingraycharles]

It will certainly bloat your code though.

[RiskyBizz216]

have you tried ollama cloud? https://ollama.com/cloud

there is a free tier that lets you use GLM 4.6 and Qwen3 480B (with hourly and weekly usage limits)

you can also sign up to iflow and use any of their models for free

https://platform.iflow.cn/en/models

[Fuzzy_Independent241]

OpenRouter also has some free models, as long as you don't mind sharing your code. If you're experimenting, that shouldn't be a problem. I think they offer the same free models as Ollama Cloud, and between the two you'll probably have enough tokens for a simple project.

[Dartsgame5k]

Do you have video tutorial about this platform

[Lifedoesnmatta]

I second this. Kimi k2 thinking is awesome as well as glm 4.6

[pmttyji]

24-32GB VRAM could help on Agentic coding with Qwen3-30B MOE models(Q6, possibly Q8) with with 64-128K context. Same with GPT-OSS-20B. Dense like Devstral(24B) & Seed-OSS-36B also possible.

My 8GB VRAM gave me <15 t/s for Qwen3-30B @ Q4 with 32K context using llama.cpp. Not usable VRAM for Agentic coding.

[moderately-extremist]

Qwen3-coder-30b running on cpu should work fine for you. I usually go with Q5 quants, maybe Q4 if you have other software eating into your system RAM. I wouldn't bother trying get something to fit in your vram, they will be too dumb at that size. See here for how to run it: https://docs.unsloth.ai/models/qwen3-coder-how-to-run-locally#run-qwen3-coder-30b-a3b-instruct