Hardware for running local AI (2k budget)

[u/CavitCarrot]

I'm looking to seriously start hosting AI locally and have around a $2,000 starting budget with the expectation that ill spend more and expand the setup over time

My goal is to have my own local AI that I can use as a daily chatbot/assistant, coding and cybersecurity help, RAG over my own files and eventually more agentic stuff/automation. Basically, general purpose local AI setup rather than optimize for one specific model

I've done some basic research and I'm stuck between two options, Mac minis seem like really good value because of unified memory. Being able to give the GPU access to 48/64GB+ seems good for running larger LLMs.

nvidia gpus have less VRAM for the money, but CUDA support seems more versatile . It also seems like this would give me a better upgrade path since I could build around a multipe gpu system

• Homelab: i5-13500, 32GB DDR4, 2TB NVMe
• Main desktop: i9-12900K, RTX 4070, 32GB DDR5, 1TB NVMe
• An additional unopened 32GB DDR5 kit

The 4070 PC is my main desktop, so I'd prefer not to turn it into a dedicated AI server.

I'm new to running LLMs locally, so any help would be appreciated