Best Open Source AI Models for Low-End PCs

Not everyone has 24GB of VRAM. If you're on a student laptop or a budget rig, these are the models you should be running via Ollama or LM Studio.

1. Qwen 1.5 (0.5B / 1.8B parameter versions): Astounding multi-lingual capabilities running on literal potatoes.
2. Gemma 2 (2B): Google's lightweight open model. Very smart for its size class.
3. TinyLlama (1.1B): The classic 1B model, great for simple categorization or sentiment analysis scripts.

Always look for the Q4_K_M GGUF files to maximize the VRAM / RAM efficiency without degrading the smarts too heavily.