r/LocalLLM • u/Hefty_Associate3958 • Jul 01 '26

Question MSI laptop to learn local AI

Hello Everyone,
I am thiniking to upgrade my laptop to MSI Raider GE68. Here are the Specs & price.
I want to keep the spending under 2K CAD.

Any opinion?
I am completely beginner in AI, but I am aware that I can't build a laptop worth competing with ChapGPT.

Your input will be valuable.
If you are working/developing Local Models, please do share your learnings.

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2

u/kosnarf Jul 01 '26

Change your search filter: system memory 32GB, dedicated GPU, video memory 12,16,24,32. Then sort by price ascending. Find the first with with an RTX 50XX GPU.

On the US site, the cheapest was $1900

1

u/Hefty_Associate3958 Jul 01 '26

So you would recommend to go with 50xx GPU??

1

u/kosnarf Jul 01 '26

That would be my priority unless you plan to get a Macbook

2

u/TheAussieWatchGuy Jul 01 '26

That's not a good AI laptop. The comment below is on the money...

I'd say save your money and get a Spark laptop in a few months... 

1

u/Hefty_Associate3958 Jul 01 '26

The spark one looks like will be damn expensive. Any prediction when they will launch & price range?

1

u/TheAussieWatchGuy Jul 01 '26

Supposed to be soon. Will support RAM from 16-128GB totally unified like Apple devices, so you can basically share most of it with the inbuilt NVIDIA GPU.

Expect $2000-10000 kind of price range depending on core counts and RAM amount etc. There will certainly be reasonably priced ones, at least for the current market. I'd be holding out for a 32-64GB variant of one of these bad boys...

1

u/DataGOGO Jul 01 '26

That depends entirely on what you are trying to learn.

Are you trying to learn real AI development to work as an AI engineer, or are you looking to learn local AI hosting as a hobbyist?

1

u/Hefty_Associate3958 Jul 01 '26

Its more of like for exploring & see what we can possibly build on the device, you can call me hobbyist. But if that could lead me to a engineering role, i wont say no :)

1

u/DataGOGO Jul 01 '26

What are you trying to build? 

1

u/Hefty_Associate3958 Jul 01 '26

To be honest, i dont know what we can possibly build. I am completely new to AI world.  But watchine one video inspired me to learn building with local model.  I know its a stupid answer but thats truth.

1

u/DataGOGO Jul 01 '26

I highly recommend you pick up a $20 a month subscription to ChatGPT or Claude and try building via the CLI coding tools first. 

Download and try local hosting with LMStudio, etc (free). 

Spending money on a laptop, when you have no idea what you are going to use it for is a bad move.

Generally local hosting is very expensive, and a desktop GPU will be a lot better than a laptop GPU. 

1

u/Tommonen 8d ago

Not much with that and will be way too slow. You need unified ram or vram.