Everyone on planet Earth is talking about local AI right now
And for good reason
Governments are banning models. Hardware prices are 10xing
You NEED to be getting into local AI. The number 1 questions everyone has though is which computer to buy?
Here's your answer:
You basically have 3 options:
1. MAC STUDIO (high intelligence, lower speeds)-
Mac Studios are excellent devices for local AI. They can run MASSIVE models. I'm running GLM 5.2 right now on a single Mac Studio. The model is Opus 4.8 level
The issue is, Mac Studios are a bit slower at running intelligence (altho the M5 Ultra is promising)
Mac Studios are a good choice for you if you want frontier level intelligence, but are fine running the intelligence passively
Meaning you get top intelligence, but it runs more in the background rather than on demand
As an example, I have GLM 5.2 running security checks on my codebase every hour. It creates a report. I review this later in the day
2. POWERHOUSE NVIDIA CHIPS (RTX 5090, 6000 Pro)
Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world, and for good reason
They make the world's best GPUs.
They have decent VRAM (32gb on the 5090, 96gb on the 6000 Pro) and INSANE bandwidth. Meaning the local models run at unbelievable speeds
I'm running Qwen 3.8 locally on a 5090 and it's just as fast as cloud models
I'd go this route if you want to run an AI agent like Hermes off a local model, still get decent intelligence, but have it able to work lightning fast
3. AI WORKSTATIONS (DGX Spark type computers)
The DGX Spark is an excellent AI computer
It has high memory (128gb unified memory) and has decent speeds because of the Nvidia CUDA architecture
It is basically the sweet spot between a cutting edge Nvidia chip and a Mac Studio
You can run medium sized models, and get usable speeds out of them
You're not going to get the same performance as cloud models, but it will allow you to offload small secondary tasks to your local models for them to handle
They are also the absolute easiest to get up and running
You plug it in, then tell your agent on your main computer to go onto it and set it up. You don't even need it connected to a monitor
CONCLUSION
Here's what it comes down to: how high intelligence do you need, what speeds do you need, and how plug and play do you want?
Want the highest speeds, like you are used to with cloud compute? Build a computer around an RTX 5090
Want to run frontier level intelligence, and don't mind slower speeds, go with a Mac Studio
Either way, it's never been more important to get into local AI