Everything here was bought or borrowed, lived with for real, and scored on what it's actually like to own — not what the box says.
A mini PC the size of a hardback book that runs a capable AI model entirely on its own. It won't out-think the big services, but after a month I stopped paying for one. Here's the honest picture.
128 GB of shared memory in a small box, running large AI models that a normal graphics card can't fit. It costs $1,999, and unlike most mini PCs you can take it apart.
Apple's small desktop turns out to be one of the best-value machines for running AI at home — if you buy the memory right at checkout and accept that you can never change it later.
A graphics card from 2020 that costs around $690 used and remains the cheapest way to the fastest local-AI experience — if you have a full-size PC to put it in and don't mind the power bill.