What fun is having an AI workstation if you don’t dive deeply into what makes AI work. Inference is maybe 98% of AI tasks from image generation to machine learning and even basic chats and summaries. We rely on model makers to do the heavy lifting and provide models that we can use, either in the cloud or locally.
In my previous articles I discussed the balance between model quality and hardware requirements for running AI models locally. For this article I wanted to discuss software and how my AI Workstation build was designed to work with the software packages and how I can switch between them to complete certain tasks.
Building an AI workstation is rarely about buying the single fastest component on the market; it is about finding the specific "sweet spot" that fits your workload. Whether you are prioritizing VRAM capacity, PCIe lane availability, or thermal management, the right build depends entirely on how you plan to use your machine. The goal isn't just raw power, but the ability to run the tools you need efficiently.
This is the first article in a new AI Hardware series talking about the requirements for running AI Models and why paying attention to these things can help you build a better AI Workstation. If anything learning why a DGX Spark or Mac Mini work but, can also be really slow.
2026 marks the 30th year for Lexar and they started CES off with an announcement that they were going to be the global storage partner for the Argentina National Football (Soccer) Team and launched a number of AI focused storage devices.
For years Aorus (Gigabyte) has been one of my favorite destinations during trade shows and while at Computex they launched their line of gaming memory modules this year they cranked things up and have one of the best monitor implementations I have ever seen.
During the pre-show keynote Jensen Huang talked about a good number of things from Ray-Tracing technology, Laptops, Monitors and gave some in-depth details about how the new RT and Tensor cores actually work and make gaming better.
Mushkin was showing two new NVMe drives at CES 2019 that will compete in both segments of NVMe performance.
Of course this would not be an EVGA CES without a KPE video card launch and they are showing a monster. This ground up RTX 2080Ti design features a custom PCB, and hybrid GPU cooler however, there is a dedicated waterblock version for those with custom loops and the love for the KPE.
NVIDIA lifted the embargo on the new RTX 20-Series and in admits of the rejoicing and Ray Tracing goodness some questions remained, namely if upgrading to RTX is worth it.
EVGA had a few things to show during Computex 2018 including a couple new motherboards, an update to their X299 Dark UEFI that adds a stress test and auto overclocking feature. The final is more halo and features automatic LN2 overclocking.
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