Hey team,
Years ago, SO gifted me an Alienware Aurora R7.
It has an Intel I7-8700 and Nvidia GTX 1080 (8GB VRAM), 16 GB of DDR 4 RAM. (what else is relevant to this question?)
My question to you is basically this -
Given that I’m not gaming with it anymore, I want to use it for only two things -
- Plex Server
- Running random local LLM stuff like Kotaemon (https://github.com/Cinnamon/kotaemon)
Let’s say I have $1000 to throw at a GPU and I’d like to get 16 GB VRAM (or 24 if it’s possible). I want to install it myself rather than take it into a shop.
What’s a GPU I can buy that will fit,
- within my budget?
- within the chassis?
- with the CPU and motherboard without issues?
- with the needs I’ve detailed (namely Plex transcoding, and running ML models)?
I am an absolute noob when it comes to figuring out what hardware to buy (hey, we got us an Alienware sucker here).
So lemmings, help me out! I’d rather not ask ChatGPT.
I had a long running plan that played out with my GTX 1080. I wanted my server (in my bedroom) to be as quiet as possible, and the (Gigabyte) 1080’s fans, with one slightly dodgy bearing, wasn’t going to cut it. I deshrouded it and ran thermal tests in my main PC. Long story short, while in the server machine it blitzed a local Piper model (<1s processing voice commands) and Emby transcoding with Max 5GB used. I know Piper is a far cry from an LLM, but at least you’ll know that its more than capable of everything else.
Edit: Here are my notes in case it helps anyone lol