aegis_cameraMacBook M5 Pro and Qwen3.5 = Local AI Security System
Currently the barrier to entry for local models is about $2500. Funny thing is $2500 is about the amount my parents paid for a 166 MHZ machine in 1995.
This is very false. My first system was a 3060 which you can buy new for about $300 or used for about $200. If you already have an existing system you can use it, else you can pick up a used PC for about $150. Entry is about $500.
Perhaps OP was referring to a usable agentic system, for which $2500 sounds about right.
I've got a 3060 myself, which is nice to play around with the smaller models for free (minus electricity) and with 100% uptime, but I was not able to program anything with them yet that I didn't want to rewrite completely. A heavily quantized Qwen3.5-27B model is getting close though. Maybe in a few months.
I was actually thinking of the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 which compiles the linux kernel in 62 seconds and is the first usable integrated graphics solution I've seen.
Benchmarks: https://old.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1rpw17y/ryzen_a...