About Voltarum Local LLM Hardware Guide

Voltarum Local LLM Hardware Guide helps you choose hardware for running open language models at home: graphics cards, Macs, mini PCs with unified memory and small edge boards for homelab projects.

Most buying guides rank hardware by gaming benchmarks or by marketing numbers. For local AI the questions are different:

• Will the model I want fit in memory? That decides whether it runs at all.
• How fast will it answer? That depends mostly on memory bandwidth.
• Will it run quietly, 24/7, without a huge power bill? That decides whether it belongs in a homelab.

So every page here is built around the models people actually run, with memory needs calculated from the real model files and a clear line between facts, estimates and our opinion.

What we cover

• Graphics cards from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
• Unified-memory computers: Apple silicon Macs, AMD Ryzen AI Max mini PCs and NVIDIA DGX Spark / GB10 systems.
• Edge boards that can run language models: NVIDIA Jetson, the Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 and RK3588 boards.

We do not cover CPU-only setups: they work for small models, but they are not what most people should buy for local AI.

How we make money

Some links are affiliate links: if you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what we recommend. Details in our affiliate disclosure and methodology.

Independence

We are not affiliated with any manufacturer, and nobody pays for a place in our lists or comparisons.