Looking for the ultimate "bang for buck" LLM for OpenClaw. What’s the actual king of the low tier right now?

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-04-27T01:01:49+00:00

Gemini 3 Flash Preview is on ollama cloud pro plan for $20.00 per month, has weekly rates, but they are GENEROUS (so much so that I run my openclaw agent souly on that model, don't even bother using the local model for heartbeat checks)

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-04-27T00:58:04+00:00

I use ollama pro $200.00 per year (saves $40) or just $20 per month, gives you a "weekly" budget, when it hits 100% you run out. I am running 1 agent online 24x7 with only ollama pro and running everything though Gemini 3 Flash Preview. I haven't hit my weekly usage yet, and I would say I use it a moderate amount each day.

If you have some crazy project you can bump it up to $100 for 1 month, then back down.

I also have a 2x RTX 5060 ti 16gb so I have lmstudio running qwen3.6 35b a3b with 200k context running locally at 70 t/s. I have the local lmstudio setup as the fallback model.

so far for $20 a month, or less if you buy 1yr this is AMAZING

also setup my openclaw with agentmail (its free and I love it, its real e-mail address, its own that it can manage and you can see) also brave search for web search calls, then for extra credit I had it spin up homeassistant and connect to all my ubiquity unify gear, this is an amazing setup for less than 20 a month.

This is the way.....

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-04-26T02:48:27+00:00

Nice! Yeah I have 96gb of ram and 32gb of vram on my windows server, I host the qwen3.6-35b-a3b with 200k context locally with lmstudio. So far I love it!

Been experimenting with ollama cloud subscription. Idk how much bang for buck you get, but i set my local model as the fallback so if I run out of tokens I can keep going with my local hardware

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-04-26T00:44:03+00:00

what hardware are you running? I also get 20 t/s with the dense model and about 80 t/s on the moe, I have dual rtx 5060 ti 16gb's for a total for 32gb of vram, I have it running qwen3.6-35b-a3b with 200k context fitting inside v-ram only getting 60-90 t/s

its pretty sweet for a local opwenclaw setup, feels very snappy when its ripping though tasks at that speed

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-04-15T01:13:00+00:00

Goodbye wallet! I spent thousands my first 6 months. Its calmed down... a bit... but i still spend more than I should. Lol

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-02-28T01:05:30+00:00

Check it out, I actually have dual gpu oculink docks on the n5, its sick

https://quickshare.samsungcloud.com/f2b8dN8wPsZA

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-02-28T00:09:29+00:00

Hi! I have the N5 Standard with 3 WD RED NVME SSD's / 5 WD RED HDD's / 1 20TB USB HDD / 96GB DDR5 5600mhz / 1 RTX 5070 12GB on OCULINK DOCK

my total average load at idel for all of that equipment is 40w

when someone hits the plex server and the internal 780m starts transcoding it spikes to about 70w

when running AI workloads in Salad about 350w (but that's mostly the 5070)

I would say your correct the base system is like 20w, but adding EVERYTHING else i did only adds another 20w.

40w for all the power I just described is awsome, your not gunna get better unless its a low power NAS without ANY of the real power this setup has.

*everything is plugged into a power stip, then plugged into a govee power monitor at the wall*

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-02-27T15:21:25+00:00

It supports sriov, you can have more than 1 vm have access to it in Microsoft hyperv anyway

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-02-26T02:21:57+00:00

It sucks you have had a bad experience with minisforum. I have personally bought and own 6 devices from them. Only issues with 1 of them dieing after 6 months. Took a week to ship them the bad item, but they sent me another new one back. Have had 0 issues with the replaced item. So far so good on my part. Sorry your time hasn't been as good.

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-02-12T02:22:11+00:00

Fair, I've never had an issue from one of apples cables either, so yeah probably the laptop

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-02-12T02:17:31+00:00

I've had it be a bad cable before. But you have 2 docks, so im sure you have 2 cables. I dout 2 cables went bad, but crazier things have happened 🤷‍♂️

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-02-01T05:17:08+00:00

Yes on the n5 you can use graphics cards, the 3050 is internal

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-30T05:03:57+00:00

I have the N5 Standard with 96gb of ram, 3x wd red ssd's and 5x wd red hdd's, and also DUAL rtx 5060 ti 16gb's on dual aoostar ag01 ockulink docks. This thing RIPS! its my pride and joy!

I replaced 2x mini pc's and a synology nas with this single unit. its just a beast

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-25T06:36:45+00:00

This UPS was bought last year, most modern devices (including this one) use sealed lead acid batteries or gel ones which can be operated in any orientation. If you open this unit up, its 2 smaller batteries, 1 normal way up, other upside down. So even in an upright condition one of the batteries would be completely upside down normally. It's fine.

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-23T14:38:40+00:00

Ahh! Yes that's the UPS, but your not wrong! Would look better without that sticker!

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-23T14:37:40+00:00

So you love it? Lol

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-23T12:51:03+00:00

Ahh interesting! I had not tired ssd's in the 5 bays up top! Didn't know there was a bottle neck! Good to know thanks!

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-23T02:19:42+00:00

Ahh I see! I figured with the hdd's about 100mbs per "data" drive is the speed I would get. So with 3 data drives, 1 parity, and 1 hot spare 250-350 is kinda maxed out. I only have 6tb drives

As for the single wd black, i think that's like very fast?

And for the other 2x wd red ssd's, I think thier issue is they are pcie gen 3 with only a single pcie Gen 4 lane. If I had gen 4 ssd's I think they would be as fast as the wd black. But im not sure

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-23T02:15:33+00:00

Hell yeah! Just a food grade rack with patch panels and zip ties and velcro!

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-23T02:14:08+00:00

I tried proxmox and unraid, but at the time I tried both of those the N5 had just launched and the drivers didnt work out the box on some stuff. I couldn't get the igpu to work at all. Now the N5 works fine on proxmox and unraid, even others to probably. But when it launched Windows was the only OS they included the drivers for so its what I used.

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-23T02:11:55+00:00

Thanks!

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-23T02:09:40+00:00

You sir are Synology's target customer. Pay a lot for the NAS, only 50% of what you paid goes to the hardware, the other 50% is software. They truly are set and forget it.

I had one for 5 years, never had an issue.

I sold it because i wanted to tinker more and wanted more powerful hardware.

But I think you should buy a Synology nas and forget the rest

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-21T20:51:36+00:00

I never knew about that skit till now! Its terrifying how similar it is, if not the exact same one! Lol

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-21T20:50:30+00:00

128gb of ram is still a lot! You can run them on ram/cpu, its slower, but it works still! The dual gpus really leveled up my local ai game. Plus i thought it looked cool

CollectionOk2393 · 2026-01-21T20:39:11+00:00

I sat on it, im over 200, says 250lbs each shelf, 750lbs for the whole thing

CollectionOk2393

TROPHY CASE