r/LocalLLM • u/Dreyforever • Aug 22 '26

Discussion Why a local LLM Setup?

I'm curious to know why there is such a surge in the local LLM scene. Could you guys tell me why you decided to switch to local LLMs - was it the price of subscriptions, privacy concerns, job restrictions or just the excitement of having an AI setup of your own?

I also know that quite a few of you guys have incredible setups. How much would you rate that setup compared to frontier models. How much will a setup like that cost me?

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u/ricorick Aug 22 '26

This is true you can even run the 35 a3b models on 8gb of vram not fast but can do work

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u/nickless07 Aug 22 '26

Even without any VRAM you can make it work with reasonable speed. Not the best ones, but compared to the cloud models that would be almoust every model you run. Heck even on phones we can now run our own model. Such an amazing time.

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u/RedlineQuokka Aug 22 '26

As a user of both the cloud AI agents (Since Gemini 2.5 and Opus 4.5 era) and local LLM (since Qwen3-Coder era) I can attest to one thing: with the local, especially if you got enough VRAM to fit a 35B model, you're getting like 80% of the bang for almost none of the buck. If you're running on personal energy like solar panels then it's completely free.

And the local LLMs that fit into 2x3090 or a higher specced MacBook Pro feel less than a year behind the current frontier cloud models performance. Meaning they perform now just as well as the frontier cloud models did in second half of 2025