Local LLMs in 2026: What Actually Works on Consumer Hardware

Local LLMs in 2026 work on three hardware lanes: 32-core CPU with 64GB+ RAM hits 10-25 tokens per second on Qwen 3 14B, an RTX 4090 hits 30-80 tokens per second on the same model and 8-15 tokens per second on Llama 3.3 70B in Q4, and an M3 or M4 Max with 64GB+ unified memory delivers 25-40 tokens per second on 14B. Default stack: Ollama with Qwen 3 14B in Q4_K_M. Nothing exotic. The local-LLM space stopped being a hobbyist niche. The hardware is reasonable, the models are real, the tooling is pr