AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 is incredible, but entirely unnecessary
…In the Cinebench 2026 multi-thread test by Puget Systems , the 9950X3D2 leads the 9950X3D by just 6% and the 9950X by 9%, while leading by 2% against 9950X3D and tying with…
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Trying to self-host LLMs made me realize local AI has a friction problem, not a quality problem
…Hardware constraints come later — the multiple layers of research, setup, and troubleshooting hold local AI back from mainstream adoption. Related I finally found an open-source local LLM that actually competes with…
My Windows PC is unusable without these third-party tools, and Microsoft doesn't care
…SignalRGB SignalRGB is a one-stop solution to customize all of your RGB components such as motherboards, RAM, CPU coolers, graphics cards, fans, and peripherals. You don't need to manage multiple…
The Steam Machine is coming for consoles, whether Valve admits it or not
…Of course, not having to pay to play online multiplayer is a sweet bonus. And despite the lack of kernel-level anti-cheat support, you can still enjoy tons of popular multiplayer…
My budget motherboard has hit its ceiling, so I'm spending more next time
…However, things changed once I finally started experimenting with undervolting, manual tuning , PBO adjustments, memory tweaking, and GPU overclocking. That's when I quickly discovered that my motherboard might just be the…
N100 mini PCs quietly killed the Raspberry Pi for home servers
…Of course, a Raspberry Pi 5 could serve as a decent HASS unit, but you’re bound to run into performance issues as your arsenal of smart home devices scales up. Likewise…
I stopped trying to replace my Nvidia Shield and built something better instead
…Having that separation between the two tasks has fixed practically every issue I used to face. Quiz 8 Questions · Test Your Knowledge NAS over Nvidia Shield Trivia challenge Think you know why…
Google's Gemma 4 isn't the smartest local LLM I've run, but it's the one I reach for most
…On my ThinkStation PGX with its 128GB of unified memory, both fit without issue, but on a more typical consumer GPU, the 26B with a slightly aggressive quantization is a more realistic…
I picked Proxmox over TrueNAS Scale for my home lab, and I'd make the same choice today
…I only had a single 500GB NVMe boot drive, and because TrueNAS works with ZFS in storage pools, the system expects you to have multiple drives in your pool, separate from the…
One tiny change made my local LLMs more useful than ChatGPT for real work
…it multifold before I start querying my LLM. I’ve been using 9B models on my gaming machine a lot these days, and I haven’t had any performance issues even after…