this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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I'm looking to build a low-end ollama LLM server to improve home assistant voice control, Immich image recognition and a few other services. With the current cost of hardware components like memory, I'm looking to build something small, but somewhat expandable.

I have an old micro-atx form factor computer that I'm thinking will be a good option to upgrade. I'd love recommendations on motherboards, processors, and video card combos that would likely be compatible and sufficient to run a decent server while keeping costs lower, basically, the best bang for the buck. I have a couple of M.2 SSDs I can re-purpose. Would prefer the motherboard has 2.5Gbit Ethernet, but otherwise I'm open.

Also recommendations on sites to purchase good quality memory at reasonable prices that ship to the US. I'd be willing to look at lightly used components, too.

Any advice on any of these topics would be greatly appreciated. The advice I've found has all been out of date especially with crypto fading so video cards are not as expensive, but LLM data centers eating up and reserving memory before it's even manufactured.

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[–] chrash0@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (18 children)

honestly it’s hard to beat Macs these days in this space for two reasons:

  • unified memory means that you don’t have to load up on RAM just to load the model and then also shell out for a video card with barely enough VRAM to fit a basic language model
  • their supply chain is solid and has mostly avoided the constraints that other OEMs and parts manufacturers are struggling with

pricing is tough. sure, crypto is on its way out, but GPUs are still the platform of choice for most neural net workloads (outside of SoCs like Apple M-series). i built a PC in late 2024, and it’s easily worth twice what i paid for it.

[–] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 month ago (10 children)

Yeah,but I dont want to get locked into a proprietary OS or have to put a lot of effort into hacking it to run Linux.

[–] WASTECH@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I haven’t looked into Asahi Linux in a while now, but I figured the experience would be pretty good by now. You don’t need to “hack” anything to get it to run. Last I read, there were just a few driver issues, but I haven’t looked into it in probably 2-3 years now.

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