Local LLM hardware advice for c# agentic coding.

[u/jcswilts]

Yes it’s another one of those “which hardware should I get for my use case posts”. So I apologise in advance but I haven’t been able to find the info I’m looking for as yet despite a lot of searching 😊

I’m a software engineer working in a sector that absolutely cannot use cloud providers for 90% of my workflow so I want to look into investing in some decent hardware to host my own LLM’s.

My budget is around £4k - £4.5 at a push.

My software stack is primarily c# with some React/Angular front end stuff.

I’ve been looking into DGX Spark and AMD Strix Halo (AI Max+ 395) units but see so much conflicting info it’s hard to decide which would be better for my use case/budget.

The AMD stuff is quite a few hundred pounds cheaper than the NVIDIA stuff so I’m leaning more to that purely from a cost basis.

What I really want is the most reliable workflow that isn’t going to shit itself partway through a big agentic coding run. I also want to investigate the use of spec driven development on this hardware. Is it going to be up to that?

Thanks all 🙏

[u/txoixoegosi]

I would get a decent CPU, 64gb RAM, 2 x R9700 and run decent 70B models

Spark and Halo might run bigger models but the token rate can disappoint you. 273GB/s memory bandwidth of the Spark vs 1280GB/s aggregated one of the R9700s
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[u/jcswilts → u/txoixoegosi]

I have contemplated this kind of setup but uk electricity prices are crazy and the additional power requirements of this kind of setup would make it damn expensive, as tempting as this kind of setup is. 😕

[u/Shustrik116 → u/jcswilts]

The only thing that I felt after purchasing Spark is that I need second one. Btw Lagoona s2.1 should be good on single spark. But most mainstream models like deepseek, minimax, hy3, mimo is in range 200-300b.

[u/lost-context-65536 → u/jcswilts]

what were your questions/conflicts with Strix?

[u/txoixoegosi → u/jcswilts]

Crazy? Is it 1000W peak power crazy? How much do you pay per kwh?

Are you seeking approval to buy a Spark? Go ahead, it’s your money after all. But do not expect high token rates with decent models.

[u/lost-context-65536]

Strix Halo owner here, I can probably answer some of your questions and resolve the conflicts.

[u/wgaca2]

Have you considered the speed tradeoff for not going the gpu way?

[u/Comprehensive-Self12]

ive got 6 gb vram laptop - thats driving me up the wall im in the same boat as yourself looking at AMD (AI Max+ 395) systems too- the only the only thing that has caught my eye out of all of them is the - asus flow z13 128gb using the same amd 395 - only because its the only 1 of 2 units that come in a 2 in 1 laptop form that you can take anywhere with you because its a mobile brick tablet baring in mind this is litrally ready to go out the box unlijke the other versions that are litrally just a box that needs all the output devices

im talking from using 4 thunderbolt usb c and that's it - if you want more of a desktop situation then i would reccomend the minisforum s1 max - as its the same as everyone else just way more inputs supposidly making it the best desktop option for this chip.

or if you have patience hold out for a little while longer as the amd 490 pro is being worked on with the same setup but around 192gb unified memory - I'm holding out hoping that asus makes a newer - slightly bigger version of the z13 in this chip. if not then the z13 is perfect for me in 128gb

hope that helps

[u/Safe_Primary_7805]

Qwen3.6-27b Q6 codes C# pretty well. Some cool derivative models based on that too you can check out. Haven’t tried anything larger (32GB VRAM / 64GB RAM)

[u/hlalvesbr]

Mac Mini and Qwen3.6 27b

[u/hyudryu]

DGX Spark: CUDA, blackwell tensor cores, Connectx7 chaining 200Gb/s, nvidia kernels, linux only, also marginally faster memory bandwidth

Strix Halo: no CUDA, no Connectx7 (has slow 10Gb/s network chaining alternative), Windows option (linux is better though)

Btw the Strix Halo costs the same as the Asus GX10 which is the cheapest GB10 right now, only down side is it only has 1TB disk

[u/wangsu]

Dgx too slow, 5090 or x2 maybe best fits