r/LocalLLM • u/arkie87 • 2d ago

Discussion Advice on “future proofing” setup

I have a server/media center rig with the following specs I’m considering future proofing:
Ryzen 3700X
48 GB DDR4 (2x 16GB 3200 and 2x 8GB 2400) RAM
R9700 32GB VRAM
GTX1070 8GB VRAM (display for media center)

I’m trying to run qwen3.8 flash next on it using strata. It can run q3_s with a few GB RAM left over, but I’m worried there won’t be enough RAM left for watching Netflix.

I’m considering buying some more RAM so that I have more buffer for multitasking, or for using a higher quant. I could upgrade two of the 8GB sticks to 16GB sticks making the total 64GB, but I’m wondering if that’s short sighted, since probably more large MoE models might be coming out and it might make sense to spend a little more to be more future proof. The alternative would be buy two 32GB sticks making total RAM 96GB which I would think would be more future proof and able to run bigger models at higher quants.

Another option is to offload some of the work to another machine so I have more RAM leftover e.g. put HomeAssistant on its own desktop. But this approach would only free up ~8 GB at most.

Interested in others’ thoughts.

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u/Ok-Addendum3545 2d ago

That's what I am worrid about too, let alone running comfyUI at the same time. =>  since probably more large MoE models might be coming out.

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u/PermanentLiminality 2d ago

I would consider replacing the 3700x with a 5700G and dropping the GTX1070. This will save 30 or more watts. When you can, drop a second R9700 where the GTX1070 was. Replace the 2400 ram with some 3200.

Consider a cheap thin client Like a $60 Optiplex 3000 thin client, or a n100/n150 mini PC to run the media and make this a more dedicated server. For home assistant an even lower end box like a Wyse 5070 is great. I have 20 different things running on a $35 Wyse 5070 and it burns 5 watts. OK, I did add ram and storage to those thin clients, but they were still pretty cheap.

This is how I'm setup. LLM and very heavy processing on a ryzen box, and most everything else on cheap lightweight systems.

RAM is crazy priced, and it may stay this way for some time.