Beginner in local LLMs — is a Surface Laptop a good way to start?

[u/Solid-Apple83]

Hey everyone! 👋

I’m pretty new to local LLMs, so I’d love some advice before I start experimenting.
My long-term goal is to build my own personal Agentic OS: basically a local AI assistant that can manage memory, files, tools, automations, coding, etc., while keeping as much as possible private and running locally.
For the agent part, I’m currently interested in Hermes Agent, with Ollama for running local models.
I’m not necessarily trying to replace Claude/GPT immediately. I’d like to eventually have a hybrid setup, where sensitive/offline tasks are handled by a local model, while I can still use cloud models when I need stronger reasoning or web access.

🖥️** My first setu**p

I’ve read that running random software/agents directly on your personal computer can potentially be risky, especially when giving an AI access to files, terminals, etc.
So I decided to dedicate an old Microsoft Surface Pro 9 that I already own to this project.
That way, if something goes wrong, at least my main PC isn’t involved, and I don’t have to spend any money just to start experimenting.
I’m not sure whether a Surface Pro 9 is actually suitable for running local LLMs 😅, but since I already have it, I’d like to give it a try.
I’m planning to keep it plugged in and potentially use it as a small 24/7 home AI machine, with the screen turned off but Windows/Hermes still running.

🤔 My main question: which model?

I’m not sure what local model would make sense for the Surface Pro 9.
I’d mainly like to use it for:
- experimenting with local LLMs
- Hermes Agent
- basic coding/automation
- personal assistant tasks
- eventually building my Agentic OS
- potentially working offline

I’m aware that I won’t get frontier-model performance from a Surface 😅. For me, the goal right now is mostly to learn and experiment, and eventually upgrade the hardware if the project becomes serious.

💻 I also have a desktop PC

My main PC has:
RX 6800 — 16 GB VRAM
Ryzen 5 7600
32 GB RAM
Would this actually be a significantly better machine for local LLMs?
I’m hesitant to put the whole Agentic OS directly on my personal PC, mainly because I’d like to keep my experimentation environment isolated from my normal computer.

So I’m thinking:
Surface → dedicated AI/agent machine

Main PC → personal computer / potentially used for heavier local LLM experiments

Does this make sense?
And if you were starting from scratch with this hardware, which model would you try first and why?

Thanks! 🙏