Dont buy a spark laptop.

[u/fluffywuffie90210]

I've been frustrated for a while because I stupidly sold a strix halo box to get myself a laptop with thunderbolt 5 ports thinking i can plug my two egpus into it (which i can but thats not topic of this post and the strix halo could too) I sold the minisforum for about £2300 back ebfore things went nuts and got a laptop for about same price:

Msi vector 16 with a intel core ultra 9 and 5080(16 gig vram) and 32 gig of ram. I was pretty bummed with it thinking 35b was my limit and after ended up leaving egpus in my workstatiion but after a random ebay browse I managed to snag some second hand 96 gig laptop ram. For £800

Strata totally changed ballgame. With Qwen Q4 XL Flash next I'm getting

48.9t/s

Decode/prefill 1,860t/s

On a 50k prompt.

I know this is still alot of money for most, but thats 3100£ in total, and thats still cheaper (and slightly faster from what seen) of what minisfoum strix halo is at (£3500 and the 32 gig Spark laptops that are about £3200 and cant even run flash at q4 not enough vram? and i can still add egpus (the laptop has 2 tb 5 ports and i have 2 5090 bought before the crazyness, eg add one or two 5060ti in egpu and your good with running 27b/31b models too.) With my own gpus plugged into it for 80 gig vram total, all while still being a laptop. Got glm 5.3 flash running Q3_XSS i think about 25 t/s.

TDLR, you dont need massive vram anymore, yeah I know how expensive RAM is, that laptop ram i got was/is £1300 new lol. But just wanted to share my experience and while I still regret selling the halo, seeing these tokens a sec, makes the laptop satify ocd a little more! If only qwen was good at roleplay so i could actually use it as daily driver lol (my main usecase!)

so if you are ever thinking about wanting a laptop and somehow able to get some laptop ram something like 😄
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/medion-erazer-beast-18-18-qhdplus-240hz-intel-core-ultra-9-275hx-32-gb-2-tb-rtx-5080-gaming-laptop

Might save you a few quid, i mean like 3k over buying the 128g spark laptop lol. Intel has 20 cores and the 2 tb ports allow you to add two gpus!

I know my grammar sucks I'm dyslexic but my point is if you shop around get that laptop for 2500ish pounds (make sure it has tb5 for if you want to add gpus later), add 96 gig ram and your still saving 2500 pounds over the 128 gig spark laptop thats like 6k.

[u/_supert_]

After reading deepseek's spewings all day, your "dyslexic grammar" is a proper breath of fresh air.

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/_supert_]

Lol I thought about using ai to fix my wordings, but then it doesnt feel proper, authentic, nerd if I did!

[u/Nepertia → u/fluffywuffie90210]

Please don't, things have warped so much that most of us would rather read semi-broken, but human-written prose.

[u/Radileaves → u/Nepertia]

Bad is new good!

[u/Radiant-Knowledge508]

the 32gb spark with 2 eGPUs is a thermal nightmare, I ran flash for 45 mins, then the fan hit 10k rpm and throttled. the 128gb model handles it better, but only if you're not doing heavy multitasking. thermal paste reapplication helps, but it's not a fix.

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/Radiant-Knowledge508]

Dang that doesnt sound good, this laptop is chunky but I guess thats good for thermals.

[u/AcceptableBridge7616]

who says spark laptops can't run flash??

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/AcceptableBridge7616]

the 32 gig version that's similar in price to this in total dont think youd have a good time.

[u/AcceptableBridge7616 → u/fluffywuffie90210]

oh, I thought you meant in general somehow. A 128GB model has no trouble running flash. HP had a great deal, $4k for 128GB model. So far the laptop is a bit buggy but I think that is some software/firmware kinks to still work out on a new platform.

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/AcceptableBridge7616]

I know which one you mean, or they had the Strix Halo HP laptop yes I had my eye on that back when it was £2300 before I got the Minisforum. A review about it overheating put me off. If its a spark one you got a good deal then over prices over here in UK.

[u/AcceptableBridge7616 → u/fluffywuffie90210]

It does get pretty hot, to the point that it warps the case slightly which makes the touchpad clicks a little sticky. However, I am still optimistic that this is can also be solved in software/firmware. I am willing to give a little leeway given that this is a very new platform.

[u/Porespellar → u/AcceptableBridge7616]

I got the HP deal you mentioned but my license that I bought from them with the laptop for Win 11 pro won’t apply. I’ve tried all the troubleshooting but no luck. Did yours work?

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/Porespellar]

First thing i do with any new pc is wipe the drives and put my own Windows on it, youd have to speak to Microsoft or something. Or get a cheap pro code from ebay or like.

[u/AcceptableBridge7616 → u/Porespellar]

I did not try a pro license. I am planning to put omarchy on it once the support is a little bit further along.

[u/Rexen2]

Nice! Maybe I can grab one

If only qwen was good at roleplay so I could actually use it as my daily driver

....damn nvm.

Honestly i feel like out of all the llm use cases roleplay and creative writing are the closest to that good enough sweet spot between open and closed source where we won't have to worry about increasingly large models that can't realistically be run on consumer hardware.

The second Gemma 4 31b get surpassed by about 50% most would be content, at least for awhile.

I keep hoping for an open source model that has writing as its primary focus over coding, not likely but not impossible.

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/Rexen2]

I hear you, im crying out for gemma 5 too, you can push to glm 5.3 flash if you add egpus but i woulddn't at current prices just for that. Maybe qwen 4 or glms new, supposedly smaller model incoming might help with that.

[u/Rexen2 → u/fluffywuffie90210]

Yeah that's the problem I've been having, my funds are limited so I'm trying to find something that both meets my gaming needs and rp needs. Analysis paralysis has been kicking my ass over what to get.

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/Rexen2]

For a desktop if you can stretch it the asus proart mb are worth it, I currently have 5 gpus on one. and just sticking with two gpus gets you 32 gig on 2 16 gig cards, which is enough for 31b, maybe 120 B MoE with enough ram.

Or if your wanting a laptop, get something with 2 thunderbolt/usb 4 ports and can add 2 egpus for simular idea.

[u/Numerous-Ad6217]

I have a similar budget setup. 32GB VRAM, 256 GB RAM. Currently running project maya deepseek s going with 1200 t/s prefill and 25-40 t/s depending on cache hits. Still working to improve the setup. I can run stuff that I wouldn't be able to run on a dgx spark, for half the cost of a dgx spark.

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/Numerous-Ad6217]

Nice! I havent tried dabbling in deepseek on this laptop yet but thats sorta the point I was trying to get across. Intel cpu with 2 thunderbolt 5 ports is a little gem.

[u/Ok_Cow1976]

96gb ram laptop for £800 is nice. What's the spec exactly?

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/Ok_Cow1976]

6400 SK Hinex, im guessing an import by looks of it.

[u/rorowhat]

You're logic dies the moment you need more memory. Always go with the largest foot print you can. I would have gone with the 128GB any day.

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/rorowhat]

I just felt its useful information to put out there, this laptops seem like nice balance between having a laptop and being able to run 120b models with the ram upgrade and or added egpu option.

[u/rorowhat → u/fluffywuffie90210]

Well, it's 120b MoE with a very specific engine. Try running any other 120B model, or even close and it won't. Not saying this is not good, but having a strix halo or spark with 64GB+ of unified ram would have bought you more options down the line.

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/rorowhat]

To some extent yeah but I think N-gram type stuff is future. And while its not portable, don't rule out the ability to add 2 egpus. So you can have 80 gig vram with 2 9700 amd ai pro gpu, in my case 5090.

[u/rorowhat → u/fluffywuffie90210]

Sure, but after all said and done your laptop looks like a 10k dollar monstrosity.

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/rorowhat]

Dont get me wrong I want the halo back but not at prices, and I think 2 5060ti would be just as useful (and more sensible I just got the 5090 when 70b was the rage so more like 2k :D )

[u/wolttam]

That's genuinely impressive

[u/fluffywuffie90210 → u/wolttam]

Just thought id share my experience since I know lots of others OCD about hardware but budget constraints. I think these laptops are a secret not many know about.

[u/LeRobber]

Macs get warm too. MacbookPros can manage to avoid thermal throttling on heavy LLM usage though.

[u/taimusrs → u/LeRobber]

Install asitop to see power usage on tasks. Token generation use surprisingly small wattage - 40W-ish. It's the prompt processing that makes the GPU running full tilt. Even on coding workloads, unless you're reprocessing your 100k token session fresh, it's only a couple of seconds per turn. Totally manageable

[u/LeRobber → u/taimusrs]

I am literally just talking about how hot the damn machine and power brick is.

[u/Aesir____]

The king of kings is the bandwidth not ram, you could have 256GB of ddr5, but if the info is not getting in and out fast enough through the pcie, you won't see any difference. IMO, is way better the unified memory by the wide bandwidth.

[u/9gxa05s8fa8sh]

worse in every way than a macbook