The mechanism

Analysis

How the stack actually works: money, compute, regulation, and second-order effects.

A Noctua NH-D15 CPU air cooler with the classic brown-and-beige fans, photographed on 3 November 2022. The lead image fits that square Commons photograph into a 16:9 frame. The cooler in the photograph is the earlier NH-D15, not the NH-D15 G2 shop listing. Photo by Kaleb Kloppe, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Analysis

The tower a local model sits under is not the pump a loop leaves running

A buyer guide to CPU air coolers, tower heatsinks, for a desktop that leaves llama.cpp, a fine-tune, or a ComfyUI queue running for hours. The shop cards are an ARCTIC Freezer 36, a be quiet! Dark Rock 5, a be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5, a Noctua NH-D12L, and a Noctua NH-D15 G2. A closed loop has a pump. These do not. Artificial Examiner has not bench-tested these coolers. The links are affiliate.

BySenior Analyst

A Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, 1 TB, photographed from above on 26 March 2022. The lead image fits that Commons photograph into a 16:9 frame. The module in the photograph is a 980 PRO, not one of the shop listings. Photo by D-Kuru, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Analysis

The drive a local model maps is not the portable disk a cable feeds

A buyer guide to internal M.2 NVMe SSDs, PCIe 4.0, in the 2 TB class, for a desktop or mini PC that loads GGUF weights, a Hugging Face cache, and ComfyUI checkpoints from the slot. The shop cards are a Samsung 990 PRO, a Samsung 990 EVO Plus, a WD_BLACK SN850X, a Crucial T500, and a Kingston NV3. Saturday's portable shelf is a different drive. Artificial Examiner has not bench-tested these modules. The links are affiliate.

BySenior Analyst

An ATX computer power supply from an Acer Aspire Z5763, photographed 7 June 2018 on a white background. The lead image fits that Commons photograph into a 16:9 frame. The supply in the photograph is not one of the shop listings. Photo by Dmitry Makeev, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Analysis

The supply a local model draws is not the wattage a sticker prints

A buyer guide to ATX power supplies for a home box that leaves llama.cpp, Ollama, LM Studio, or ComfyUI running for hours on one or two graphics cards. The shop cards are a Corsair RM1000x, a Seasonic Focus GX-1000, an MSI MAG A1000GL, and a Thermaltake Toughpower GF3. The sticker is the sustained rating. Artificial Examiner has not bench-tested these supplies. The links are affiliate.

BySenior Analyst