can it run
Comfortably. 24GB of memory against a 4GB working set leaves headroom for context, the OS, and anything else you're running.
weights 2.5GB + KV cache 0.5GB at 4k context vs ~24GB usable → full. 3.0 GB needed of 24 GB usable — headroom for context
computed roofline: 936 GB/s × 0.46–0.76 efficiency window / 2.5GB (Q4_K_M) — bands, never points. Small models (under ~4.5B) run BELOW these bands — kernel-launch overhead keeps them from saturating bandwidth (measured against community medians, 09-06).
Community check: ~130 tok/s · 3-4B Q4 · 11 runs · just below our band (22% under the low edge) — localmaxxing.com
→explore the full catalog84 machines indexed · live prices · what each one can run| model file | 2.5GB (GGUF Q4_K_M) |
| minimum memory | 4GB working set |
| this machine | 24GB GDDR6X, 936 GB/s |
| params | mini 3.8B |
| license | mit |
| price | $1100 |
easy run: ollama pull phi4-mini
runs with: ollama · llama.cpp · koboldcpp · lm studio
no alternatives — every machine in the catalog can run this one.
→ rtx-5090 — the next step up from this machine's GPU
NVIDIA (used market) ↗ · Amazon ↗