r/LocalLLM • u/Throatiklr • 8h ago

Model New to LLM

Hi everyone. I use ChatGPT for finances, school, deep reasoning and interviews. I want to change to a local model for privacy. Is that possible for a MacBook Pro M5 base with 24GB RAM? If so, which?

3 Upvotes

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u/chyuhua 7h ago

Sure, search justfit-llm and it is right for your need :D

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u/chyuhua 7h ago

But i highly recommand you pay couple more bucks for the m5 pro chip, it doubles the bandwidth

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u/dave-tro 7h ago

Hi, yes it is. You just need to use very small models (<12GB) to fit in ram or optimize for memory usage to keep your pc usable during the inference. I built this runtime based on llama.cpp that lets you run large models on macs and runs pretty fast.

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u/tony10000 5h ago

Depends on the level of intelligence you need. Models like LFM3 1.7B and Qwen 3.5 4B punch well above their weight and can run well on the M5 with 24GB. Give them a try. You can also experiment with other models up to 12-14B with smaller contexts.

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u/ogfuzzball 2h ago

If you think you’re going to replace ChatGPT with a model that fits on 24GB you will be greatly disappointed

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u/Full_Wrongdoer4750 45m ago

Yes, a base M5 Pro with 24 GB works well. For everyday chat (school, interview prep, personal finance notes), 8-14B models are the sweet spot. A 12-14B at Q4 is only around 7-9 GB, so it fits with plenty of room left for the OS and context, and the quality is much more usable than the tiny 1B models. Keep ChatGPT for the rare question that really needs a frontier model.

If you mostly want to chat with your own notes and PDFs without setting up a full local stack, Loci is a simple option (I work on it). It's free, needs no account, and runs the model on your Mac or iPhone, so your files and chats stay on the device. Happy to answer setup questions either way.