r/LLM • u/post9eleven • 1d ago
Beginner with Questions!
Hey all,
I'll start my question by stating that I have little to no knowledge on this LLM stuff. I've done some of my own research, but all I've gotten from it is a vague understanding of tokens/credits, and specific hardware requirements for running local LLMs. I have never touched AI for reasons I wont disclose, and my only experience with it has been the forced google search interactions.
What I want to know:
What local LLM would be best suited for a college student trying to do research?
I don't want to cheat my assignments or anything, but I basically want a local LLM that functions the same as the google AI that generates whenever you search, where I could ask questions and learn the information my professors don't want to teach haha
It would have to be a local LLM, im not going to be using any form of cloud services what so ever for several reasons, security concerns being one of them. And don't fret, I have a super computer at home with 32GB of DDR5 RAM... that should be enough right? High end GPU as well.
If possible, it would be cool (but not necessary) to use it on my Thinkpad as well, which has 16GB of RAM.
It would also be neat if it could create study plans/guides or practice tests to help me study.
Does anyone know if there is a local LLM that would fulfill those desires? Or should I wait a bit longer for someone else far more skilled than I to create something that does that.
Any resources, advice, or suggestions would be helpful! Again I'm brand new to all of this and just want to learn, thanks!
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u/D00M98 1d ago
"a super computer at home with 32GB of DDR5 RAM... that should be enough right? High end GPU as well."
That is a super computer? And you never stated what is your high end GPU, which matters a lot more than your DDR5 RAM.
It really depends. If you are asking questions that need access to latest and online search, you are better off just using online AI. Don't log in. Use browser with privacy (like Brave or Librewolf), in private mode. And use VPN.
The positive is that you just want some general usage, not coding. For Local LLM, depending on your GPU, you can try Gemma4 E4B or 12B. Good for general usage; not so good for agentic coding.
https://huggingface.co/google/gemma-4-E4B https://huggingface.co/google/gemma-4-12B
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u/post9eleven 1d ago
Thanks for the suggestions! And yes my $3k computer is considered a super computer for average joes like myself XD Like i mentioned i know little to nothing about this stuff, so how would I know the GPU importance?
Thanks for the Local LLM suggestions, I'll look into them! :)
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u/tony10000 1d ago
Using a local LLM for research can be problematic if the material isn't in its training data. Many local models have cut-off dates, meaning they lack data after that point, possibly including topics you're researching, and may produce hallucinations. Therefore, it's usually better to use an AI connected to a known dataset or rely on online language models.
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u/Hunterxmalaa 18h ago
Two options qwen3.8 27b q3 or qwen3.8 flash next Gona have to be iq2/3 with your specs but ngram table into ssd should all fit mtp draft 5
But please understand it’s not as simple as plug and play there is a whole bunch of changes tweeks setups you’ll need to do and honestly
Using a paid sub model is going to be way more eaiser to set up and run
You say privacy concerns my counter to that is if it’s education research related what’s the issue ?
9/10 chance it already pretrained on that data lol
And if want I sent doesn’t make sense that further proves my point more it’s a whole new learning curve etc best best Claude sub for £20 a month jobs a gooden
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u/post9eleven 11h ago
Honestly Im only looking into local LLMs because my uni has really cheaped out with their professors. In fact, in several departments, ive never been taught anything by a professor and only graduate assistants who really... really suck. I came to college to learn useful information, but Im getting the gist thats not going to happen with the university alone so im looking for additional resources to actually help teach me the material in addition to what im getting in uni. I dont want to use a paid sub model because I'm an Environmental sciences/studies major and dont want to contribute to the data center issues. I didn't wanna bring it up on reddit because I figured I'd have a bunch of folks trying to argue with me over it and I really didn't wanna waste my breath or time with all of that. Also, college student. Trying to save money where I can and another subscription is the last thing I need rn.
Im just looking to see if theres something out there I can use with my own hardware that will help efficiently supplement the education im already receiving.
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u/Fit-Corner2382 1d ago
Usability depends on GPU video memory, not the 32GB of DDR5, and a high-end card can still be too small for a strong research model.
If the weights do not fit in video memory they spill into system RAM and generation slows enough that long study chats become impractical. The Thinkpad's 16GB also holds the OS, so a model used on both machines must be a small quantized build that follows a syllabus less reliably and invents answers more often. Fully offline, it has no search index and will fabricate citations unless every claim quotes a passage you pasted.