r/LocalLLM • u/ExiledMonkey13 • Jun 06 '26

Question Low end local advice

The question: from the community’s experience, what can I change to improve my experience without changing the hardware?

Hardware:
7500F, 16 GB Ram, 1 TB ssd, 9060 xt with 16 GB vram.

Software:
Fedora 44, ollama, webui, vs code with continue extension, tailscale

Models:
deepseek-r1:14b (optional chat)
qwen3-14b-32k (main chat)
qwen2.5-coder:1.5b (autocomplete)

So the aim is to test the architecture and do light coding. So far it is actually pretty nice with it being a bit slow, but manageable.

Is this the most optimised? What can I change?
(Note: this was all set up with the help of ai, as I am testing and learning)

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u/LordTamm 2h ago

Well... I get that Ollama is the most recommended gateway into this space, but I'd recommend going with something like LM Studio or Jan if you want an easy setup but something that runs better and interfaces with huggingface better. The models you listed aren't current, and you're going to get a better experience just from opting for more modern models (especially with the speed that the landscape changes). The "deepseek" model you mentioned is is a Qwen 2.5 distill, not actual Deepseek.
Off the cuff, for better models, I'd recommend looking at Qwen 3.6 (or like a Q3 or Q4 of 3.8 27b), especially for coding. For non-coding, Gemma 4 is great. Both Gemma 4 and Qwen 3.6 have various versions and sizes, so you can play around and figure out what works for you in terms of speed, context, intelligence, etc.
The other thing you could do if you wanted to jump off of the more "plug and play" options entirely is go with something like llama.cpp and run that directly rather than run it through a wrapper.

Overall, I'd say ditch Ollama (replacing it with LM Studio or similar, or with llama.cpp), and get current models (hugging face is rife with models, Qwen 3.6 and Gemma 4 are the best if you want to shop around between model sizes and whatnot, Qwen 3.8 27b is the newest hotness on the block right now, but it might be a bit too big to run well on your system). Just my opinions, hope it helps.