64GB RAM is plenty for local LLaMA 7B.

Yes, 64GB is more than enough – unless you’re also running Chrome.

LLaMA 7B in 4-bit quantization only needs about 4-6GB of VRAM. If you’re running it on CPU with system RAM, a 7B model at 8-bit might use around 7-10GB of RAM for the weights, plus some overhead. You’re not even breaking a sweat with 64GB.

128GB is overkill unless you plan to run larger models like LLaMA 30B or multiple models simultaneously. Even then, 64GB can handle a 13B model with CPU offloading just fine. The bottleneck for local AI isn’t usually RAM – it’s GPU memory and inference speed.

If you’re building a dedicated box for AI experimentation, 64GB is the sweet spot. Save the extra money for a better GPU or a faster NVMe drive. Future You will thank you when you’re not waiting on disk swap.