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April 2025 • 10 min read

Local AI Computers in 2025: What to Buy (and Why Specs Actually Matter)

Buying a “local AI PC” isn’t about getting the newest CPU. It’s about building a machine where your models fit, your responses are fast, and your total cost stays predictable.

hardware local-ai vram project-infra

Quick truth: VRAM determines what you can run, memory bandwidth determines how fast it feels, and context length determines whether RAG is useful or disappointing.

The 3 numbers that matter

1) VRAM (what model sizes you can load)

For local LLMs, VRAM is the limiting factor. Even quantized models can be large: a 70B model in 4-bit quant can land around the 35–43GB range, and long contexts add KV cache overhead.

2) Memory bandwidth (how “instant” it feels)

In interactive chat, bandwidth often matters more than raw compute. 2025 GPUs have made major gains here, and that’s why newer cards feel dramatically snappier even at similar VRAM capacity.

3) Fast NVMe storage (how quickly you load and swap models)

Local stacks are a model library. NVMe keeps your workflow tight when you’re switching between multiple models and embedding stores.

Choose your lane (3 practical categories)

Lane A: “I want a real workstation for serious local AI”

If you need to run and experiment with larger models, do RAG with big documents, and keep latency low, you want a workstation-class system.

  • Project Infra A-Server: Small Business Edition (Ryzen 9 9950X, 96GB DDR5, RTX 5090 32GB, dual 2TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe)
  • Project Infra A-Server: Startup Edition (Ryzen 9 9950X, 48GB DDR5, RTX 4000 20GB Ada, dual 2TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe)

Lane B: “I need power in a tiny box”

If you want a compact machine that can live in an office, travel, or sit on a desk without sounding like a jet engine, modern mini workstations are the move.

  • Minisforum AI X1 Pro (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 96GB RAM, 2TB SSD, Wi‑Fi 7, USB4, OCuLink for eGPU)
  • Add a GPU later via Minisforum DEG1 OCuLink eGPU dock when you need more VRAM.

Lane C: “I need a team machine, not a hobby”

If multiple people will use the same private AI, you should plan for concurrency. That means stable serving, batching, and a reliable UI (Open WebUI or similar) with permissions.

In our stack, that often means an on-prem inference box + a clean internal chat UI.

What we ship on these machines

Every Project Infra computer is designed for “sovereign AI” — meaning your tools and data stay in your environment. Typical baseline stack:

  • Local inference (Ollama / llama.cpp)
  • UI (Open WebUI)
  • RAG (documents + embeddings)

Want a machine that’s already tuned?

Browse Project Infra computers and pick your lane. If you’re unsure, we’ll spec it for your use case.

Sources referenced for selection logic: 2025 hardware guidance focusing on VRAM, memory bandwidth, quantization, and context/KV cache overhead.