PC without a graphics card, 16 GB RAM. Updated 2 November 2026.
PC without a graphics card, 16 GB RAM can run 3 of the 31 models tracked here at a comfortable speed, and another 10 slowly. No chat model fits comfortably, so this machine is best kept for speech tools and tiny assistants.
Without a graphics card everything runs on the processor. System RAM (16 GB here) holds the model and moves data at roughly 70 GB/s, so even small models produce only a few words a second. It works for small assistants and speech tools, and is not realistic for image or video generation.
Best chat pick: Gemma 4 12B at about 4 words a second. Best coding pick: Qwen2.5 Coder 7B at about 6.
Image models need more memory than this machine has.
Video models need more memory than this machine has.
No text model runs at a useful speed.
Nothing fits comfortably, so there is no headroom to speak of.
The biggest single jump is PC with RTX 3090 (24 GB) and 16 GB RAM, which would unlock 20 more models, including Gemma 4 E2B, Qwen 3.5 4B, Gemma 4 E4B.
For chat, Gemma 4 12B is the best fit, at about 4 words a second. For coding, Qwen2.5 Coder 7B.
Gemma 4 12B runs at about 4 words a second (slow); gpt-oss 20B does not fit; Qwen 3.5 35B A3B does not fit.
No. gpt-oss 20B needs about 15.2 GB and this machine tops out near 11 GB.
| Model | Verdict | Speed | Needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3 TTS 1.7B | Runs well | about 8 min | 8 GB |
| Whisper large-v3 turbo | Runs well | about 10 min | 4 GB |
| Kokoro TTS | Runs well | about 2 min | 2 GB |
| ACE-Step 1.5 | Slow | about 50 min | 12 GB |
| Phi-4 14B | Slow | 3 words/s | 10.1 GB |
| Gemma 4 12B | Slow | 4 words/s | 8.9 GB |
| Gemma 4 E4B | Slow | 9 words/s | 7.4 GB |
| Qwen 3.5 9B | Slow | 5 words/s | 7.4 GB |
| Qwen3 VL 8B | Slow | 5 words/s | 6.9 GB |
| DeepSeek R1 8B | Slow | 5 words/s | 6 GB |
| Qwen2.5 Coder 7B | Slow | 6 words/s | 5.4 GB |
| Gemma 4 E2B | Slow | 14 words/s | 5.3 GB |
| Qwen 3.5 4B | Slow | 9 words/s | 4 GB |
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Unlocks 11 more: Gemma 4 E2B, Qwen 3.5 4B, Gemma 4 E4B, Qwen 3.5 9B and more.
Unlocks 13 more: Gemma 4 E2B, Qwen 3.5 4B, Gemma 4 E4B, Qwen 3.5 9B and more.
Unlocks 20 more: Gemma 4 E2B, Qwen 3.5 4B, Gemma 4 E4B, Qwen 3.5 9B and more.