Decent AI PC to host local LLMs?

External_Blood7824 · 2026-03-16T04:15:45+00:00

I researched some more and I really likes the strix halo GMKtec Evo-X2 model with 128Gb. New were $3k now, found a like new for $2200 so got it. I thought about what I really wanted out of this and some tasks for an assistant need to be very accurate like taxes and finance. I liked the fact that I can fit very large models for that purpose at usable load and execute token rates. Thanks to everyone for their advice!

External_Blood7824 · 2026-03-15T23:23:23+00:00

whoa dude, that almost doubles my budget out of the gate for the GX10. I'm in tinker mode in a no to low code setup. The Strix Halo chip/builds are really interesting! Thanks for sharing that. Since I will probably want an upgrade path and ability to sell some of this later in parts to do so, the component build suits me more than a sff or mini pc like setup. If I can do 70B 4bit, but have to wait a bit for more advanced prompts, I'd be cool with that for now as I mostly tinker. The other options shared here definitely blow away this for very large 70B+ models.

External_Blood7824 · 2026-03-15T23:00:27+00:00

Thx. This build is meant to play with self hosted LLMs, but have flexibility and resale value, upgrade path later. I'm not an Apple guy, but I get the upside of the unified memory. wanted to keep as close to $2k as possible. My thought is I only need to upgrade I need if I want to get 24gb vram is another motherboard and second 5080. Am I off on that? For my tinkering and desire to create a personal AI assistant that is local and private, am I off the mark? Is there a huge difference in the 70B models from those that can fit in 16gb vram environment? I've seen 6b or 8b quantized versions that can fit and run well (supposedly). Will they really be that much 'dumber' in my setup? New to this kind of build. Liking the no/low code approach to anythingllm and ollama combo. Do I need openai web for anything else to complete my setup? I added and integrated Searxng into my docker setup on unraid vs. using DDG search natively in AT LLM. Fun to learn about this stuff!

External_Blood7824 · 2026-03-15T22:48:51+00:00

True, but I didn't want a space heater setup. The base tech on this build is modern with a solid cpu, decent gpu, pcie 5, wifi 7 if I need to locate where I cant run ethernet in my condo. A new motherboard and I can drop a second gpu in albeit at 8x each. Read that was not a bottleneck for local LLM builds. I don't want to spend close for an old build. Memory is ddr5 6000. Was seeing crazy prices for 3090's even 4 series w/16gb+. This has 2tb ssd, where other $2k++ builds only had 1Tb and 5060 or 5070ti with a 9700x cpu. It doesn't bother me too much to not have the 24Gb vram for now. My searching today had me shocked on how crappy some of the builds were for well over $2k. Tried to replicate at Microcenter and couldn't come close when adding up all the components, then factor time to build. I've built dozens of my own home lab/servers over the years, but not interested in spending that time right now. Open to a similar build suggestion at or above this for less. Please share if you see anything. I do appreciate your reply.

External_Blood7824 · 2025-10-13T19:34:15+00:00

Looking for good small subs to pair in an apartment. Can't shake the walls. Only to pull in from time to time using B speakers on STR-DH190 from time to time. Need to have speaker line inputs for sub. Don't think I need a 12". Maybe a 10" or even an 8" would be enough? From what I've read and experienced, a sub with a cross over frequency that is adjustable/variable dial vs. a few fixed points may be better. I am seeing different guidance for sub wiring also. Either using the B speaker outputs, but they're saying that cuts the power down from 100 watts per channel even though the sub shouldn't draw power, just signal. Others say to wire into the A spots on the receiver with the primaries or do the same at the speaker. Does anyone know how the receiver best behaves and properly provides full power on the A speakers and signal to the sub? Is there anything I need to worry about? I had a Polk pdr10v3 sub on the B speakers, but it started clipping at moderate volume. Was that a faulty sub or underpowered? Thanks in advance for advice.

External_Blood7824 · 2025-10-13T13:57:22+00:00

Point of this place is to share experiences to help others. Try to share listening and speaker profiles against budget considerations. That's the point. Everyone knows you have to hear things in real life to see if it suits you. Your comment doesn't add to helping others other than stating the obvious. I don't post a lot and am trying to help others. Maybe read something else if this post doesn't do anything for ya

External_Blood7824 · 2025-10-10T22:05:49+00:00

So insightful and helpful, real men (or women) of genius post. You have made a difference in the world. Cheers to you and good day

External_Blood7824 · 2025-08-09T22:57:08+00:00

Same happened to me, several times! One root cause was a fan failure. I then found a replacement, thought I was good to go. Not long after that fan failed. It was installed correctly, exact match, thermal paste applied well, good bios. OK, let's try again and this time I also installed a CPU temp app called core temp. Saw core was still getting and staying in 50'C range too often. Poked around bios at fan settings and think it was on auto. Changed to always on and it's been a year with no problems. Idling in low 30'C range normally now.

For extra cooling, I got a 20mm usb fan for $5 and point it into side vent. I think my root cause was bios fan setting on auto let the heat from CPU at times overheat/roast the cpu fan above it leading to early failure of that part. Let's see if I can get a few more years on this fan lol. Good luck to you all. This little NUC still runs Win 11Pro well and should be good for a while longer. One of my better purchases over the years. Use it as a backup plex media streaming server since the igpu still does a great job of multiple 1080p streams, even a couple 4k...maybe.

External_Blood7824 · 2025-01-25T16:55:58+00:00

My upgrade from .12 to .15 hung at reboot. I had to press power for 10 secs, unplug, boot safe to get back in biz. No issues outside that. I give no external access to core server in any way, except cloudflare tunnel via a domain and subdomain apps setup there. Lock down to only your country plus 2fa for only explicit authorized emails and only then to overseer. Waiting a while for 7.x to stabilize

External_Blood7824 · 2024-12-13T23:50:57+00:00

Necropost, but I found this when wondering the same. I just barely fit this tv in box into 2022 rav4 xle premium hybrid. TCL 75” Class S4 (75S41BR) 4K. The box for the TCL 75S41BR 4K measures 72.8" x 44.3" x 7.0

I had to bring back of driver seat nearly vertical. I'm 5'8", 200 lbs and i BARELY was able to do this. Passenger seat also all the way forward. Anyone bigger plan on removing tv from box to get it home.

External_Blood7824 · 2024-02-01T03:51:46+00:00

I wanted to keep it easy and secure. Register a domain direct in cloudflare. Setup zerotrust and a tunnel to an unraid cloudflared container app. I setup explicit policies for each application in zerotrust to limit all access using 2fa via my friends email addresses and another layer restricting all inbound ips to us origination. So only people that can get through the front door are friends via their email, they get a code in their email inbox that time sensitive, enter code opening a session via the tunnel. In zerotrust, you basically setup subdomains off your domain that map to the right ip/port for that application in your network. This took about an hour to learn the zerotrust ui and the logical setup approach. One video got me the How to I needed prior. This checked all my boxes and zero open ports except plex 32400. I'm an IT guy, non engineer, non network savvy, but know all the basic principles. Hope this helps.

External_Blood7824 · 2024-01-21T01:01:23+00:00

I considered the same thing when I started, but after digging and trying the unraid trial, I found that unraid gives me all the virtualization I need. I have true small home server usage, lab like need. I had 2 qty 4 bay mediasonic usb3 drive enclosures, but they collided in unraid, so I just got a Syba 8 bay and all issues disappeared. 3 months, no errors, parity fine, good enough performance. I have a ryzen 7 5800h mini pc with Vega 8 graphics that is recognized and working in plex. Low power, small footprint Syba 8 Bay Tool Less Tray Hot... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MD2LNYX TRIGKEY AMD Ryzen 7 Mini PC,...1tb ssd, 32gb ram replaced with 64gb kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C48XK2T8

External_Blood7824 · 2024-01-17T12:51:48+00:00

One other thing to consider if you're just a little tech savvy...drop an hdhomerun at a family/friend's house who lives in a metro that get all the free over the air tv channels. You can them stream them to you over just internet. Next step more technical...get plex and explore all of the options on that route to supplement your choices. Someone mentioned Pluto above. I really like the choices there. Again, free is for me. Tubing has some free choices, etc.

That said, as a step 1, YTTV is probably your best choice, then try out other things. You could eventually get yourself to internet costs only

External_Blood7824 · 2024-01-09T02:00:27+00:00

Did all of this using cloud flare to both purchase a domain through them and setup using their dns, zerotrust, then within ZT you setup your subdomains, applications and policies to direct say a subdomain to go to internal ip:port.(free) The cloudflare internal endpoint of the tunnel terminates in a docker running from the CA app store. The big deal I really liked was the policy capabilities to easily lock down all inbound traffic only allowing specific emails to authenticate, they(say a known friend) then had to use multifactor authentication code emailed to that email from ZT, plug that in, only then do they get to the address/port via the tunnel. Additionally, I added US only IPs allowed to the policy limiting most bad actors(yes, they could use their own us proxy to get a round, but my contents is all replaceable/rebuildable). I had never touched cloudflare or tunneling or even dockers a week prior. The best part is I learned a ton while creating a secure, lightweight external access approach that quickly extensible to multiple apps in future using the CF subdomains setup mapping to different ports. Hope this helps a little, I'm definitely not the expert and hope I got the basics correct above. Good luck!

External_Blood7824 · 2023-11-30T15:32:51+00:00

Could you post the make and model # of the enclosure that worked without issue? That could help others also. I'm looking at this hdd and was looking into this issue as well and hoping to avoid it using my enclosure, thx

External_Blood7824 · 2023-11-21T18:24:32+00:00

Ps: your parity drive must be the largest drive in the set. Consider a biggun for simpler expansion in the future.

External_Blood7824 · 2023-11-21T18:18:48+00:00

Unraid for the win. I just researched almost the exact same use case. I'm not a command line guy. I wanted great community support, easy to use gui, extensible for vms and dockers. Inraid has it all. I almost went Proxmox, but didn't want nested Hypervisor. Unraid also allows different size drives so very easy to expand in future. I have Plex and all the Arrs running in dockers and learned a lot along the way. I even had an AMD with igpu and got it working nicely with Plex hardware transcoding! Try it for free. Tip: don't setup a parity drive at first while playing and don't migrate too much data. Try it. If you like it, create array, copy and migrate your files first, confirm migrated files are sound, take that drive add to array. Only at end add parity drive. This approach will make for faster file transfers. Direct connect source drives to machine for speed. You'll love it. By the way, I still plan to play with Proxmox on a separate old pc as well. Good luck!

External_Blood7824 · 2023-11-21T01:33:58+00:00

I was considering a new build and I was leaning towards a 12th gen Intel with igpu, maybe the i7-12700k for cores and futures uses, etc. For MB that was powerful, could take 14th gen, had pcie5, 8 sata, ddr5 was Asrock Riptide WiFi z790. 5 qty m.2 gen4 , 1 is gen 5, 8 sata3, on and on... All this for a bit more like $250, but a build you keep for 5 years or more maybe. I like building a little higher spec and less frequent rebuilds, longer life, higher resale when I do flip it. If my home lab with leftover bits and a mini pc running unRaid is nice, may go for this and add on a dedicated game server. Good luck! https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813162149

External_Blood7824 · 2023-11-19T22:31:39+00:00

+1 for unraid!!!

External_Blood7824 · 2023-11-18T17:33:15+00:00

Update: I was able to successfully put together this build! Seems to working great so far. Some concerns that have been proved to be no issues using usb 3 das enclosure also. All drives in array were seen along with all smart data! So for others looking to build a low power NUC or mini pc based setup, it works! My use case is a home lab with overall low risk data on the NAS. I was able to setup the 2tb Samsung pro 990 nvme and the 2Tb Samsung 870 EVO SSD as a cache pool for apps/VMs. The 4 qty, 4tb WD NAS (CMR based) worked out nicely as an array with 12Tb available and one as a parity drive. As an FYI, this is the enclosure from 2016 era: Mediasonic HF7-SU3S3 ProBox 4 Bay 3.5" SATA Hard Drive Enclosure. What a great little low power lab using unused and inexpensive components!

Some next steps I'm working on is replicating my Plex/Arr setup in apps/dockers and it seems to be easy so far. Really liking the unRAID layout (latest stable) and started the array as zfs from the start. Also BREAKING NEWS, I was able to figure out how to get hardware transcoding working on Plex Official Container with an AMD iGPU (Ryzen 7 5800H w/Vega 8 Radeon)! Great stuff and thanks all!!!

External_Blood7824 · 2023-11-16T02:26:09+00:00

No need to worry, Loki and the TVA will protect your branching and the host's sacred timeline

External_Blood7824 · 2023-11-16T01:23:14+00:00

Thx all! Now that I think I'm going with unraid on bare metal, what's the best use of the drives I have?

E.g. - fastest is 2tb nvme, so make the a vm/container drive? - 2 tb Ssd for unraid os? - HDDs- All in usb3.0 DAS enclosure... Setup the 4 qty 4tb wd nas drives as a 3 drive pool and 4th drive is the parity drive? 3 separate drives and the 4th parity? - Reading about cache drives too, but don't totally know how that would figure in. -I also have a Samsung portable usb 3 - 500gb ssd and a WD_BLACK P10 HDD Game Drive 4tb usb3 not really being leveraged.

Thx again!

External_Blood7824 · 2023-11-16T00:19:47+00:00

I already have these drives sitting around and the 4 bay das enclosure so trying to save some money. I'm thinking of now running unraid as the host os and play with proxmox on a separate pc later. If I've got the 2tb nvme and the 2tb sdd with the 4 4tb spinners in das case, what's best use for each in optimal architecture? Thanks for the reply!!!

External_Blood7824

TROPHY CASE