Run Ollama Locally: Hardware Requirements in 2026 (RAM, GPU, CPU)

Ollama hardware requirements in 2026: how much RAM, VRAM and CPU you need per model size.

💡 What You Will Learn

Ollama hardware requirements in 2026: how much RAM, VRAM and CPU you need per model size.

Ollama (176K+ GitHub stars) is the most popular local LLM runner. Model file size = parameters x bytes per weight; at 4-bit quantization a 7B model is about 4-5GB plus 1-2GB context overhead. Sweet spot is 7B/8B: 8GB VRAM or 16GB RAM minimum. 3B runs on 6-8GB RAM. 13B/14B needs 16GB VRAM or 32GB RAM. 32B needs 24GB VRAM. 70B needs 48GB+. NVIDIA CUDA is best supported: RTX 4060 runs 7B Q4 at roughly 30-50 tokens/s. Pure CPU: 4-8 tokens/s. Apple Silicon 16GB: 13B Q4 at 15-25 tokens/s. Long 128K contexts add significant RAM usage. Check status with ollama ps, model size with ollama list / ollama show. Exact figures depend on hardware; check Ollama official docs.