KEY POINTS
- A PC with 16GB of RAM can run local models of roughly 7 to 8 billion parameters, but they trail frontier cloud models.
- Speed depends mostly on memory bandwidth, so a model that fits in GPU VRAM runs far faster than one spilling into system RAM.
- The largest open models, such as the 2.8-trillion-parameter Kimi K3, need data center hardware rather than a consumer PC.
Running an AI chatbot locally takes less hardware than many people assume, but the limits arrive quickly, Engadget reported in a hardware guide published on Nov. 9, 2026. A typical PC with 16GB of RAM can handle small models, while anything approaching cloud-level quality needs considerably more memory.
