alt Hacker NewsRunning a decent-ish LLM is going to take 64GB+ RAM. Most users only have/can afford 8 or maybe 16GB RAM. Local LLMs for doing anything significant is impractical for the many.
Running a decent-ish LLM is going to take 64GB+ RAM. Most users only have/can afford 8 or maybe 16GB RAM. Local LLMs for doing anything significant is impractical for the many.
> Most users only have/can afford 8 or maybe 16GB RAM.
Excuse me while I laugh.
Im not talking about the denizens of reddit or facebook here, who were suckered in buying a 8GB memory laptop in 2025 or 2026.
We're talking about hacker news users. Devs, engineers, and the like. 64GB seems the average for running IDEs like VSCod(e|ium) or running dockers for testing.
In 2024, I bought 2x48GB DDR5 for $300 on sale at Microcenter. The expensive (faster modules) were $500 off-sale. Now, prices are fucky. But ive always tried maxxing my memory. Always been the easiest performance gain.
My comment absolutely stands *for this audience*.