Writer

Priya Raman

Senior Analyst

Priya Raman is the senior analyst. She follows compute markets, inference prices, and the statutes that try to catch both. Analysis here is for the mechanism — the cluster, the contract, the second-order effect — when the mechanism is the story.

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Stories

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