AI station / mini-PC
RTX 3060 12 GB Desktop (12 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM) — Local LLM Performance
RTX 3060 12 GB Desktop (12 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM) is a Desktop running Windows or Linux, with 12 GB VRAM + 32 GB system RAM.
Specifications
- Memory for models
- 12 GB
- Memory bandwidth
- 360 GB/s
- Memory upgradeable
- Yes
- Architecture
- Ampere GA106
- Form factor
- Desktop
- Operating system
- Windows or Linux
- Released
- 2021
- Llama 3.1 8B Q4_K_M
- 26–50 tok/s
Worth knowing before you buy
- The budget entry point to local AI: 12 GB runs 7–14B models well and nothing larger without offload.
Models on the RTX 3060 12 GB desktop
- Yi 1.5 FamilyYes, but it is tight
- VibeThinkerYes — comfortably
- Aya 3B (Tiny Aya)Yes — comfortably
- StarCoder 2Yes
- SmolLM3Yes — comfortably
- SmolLM2Yes — comfortably
- Qwen3-CoderYes, but it is tight
- Qwen3.8Yes
- Qwen 3.6Yes
- Qwen 3.5Yes
- Qwen 3Yes, but it is tight
- Qwen 2.5 VLYes
- Qwen 2.5 FamilyYes, but it is tight
- Phi-4 MiniYes — comfortably
- Phi-4 FamilyYes, but it is tight
- Phi 3.5 FamilyYes — comfortably
- OLMo 2Yes, but it is tight
- Mistral Small 3.1Yes
- Mistral Small 3.2Yes
- Mistral FamilyYes, but it is tight
- MinistralYes
- Ministral 3Yes
- MiniCPM-VYes
- Magistral SmallYes
- Llama 3.2 VisionYes
- Llama 3.2 FamilyYes
- Llama 3.1 FamilyYes
- LFM2.5Yes
- InternLM 3Yes
- IBM Granite 4.2Yes
- IBM Granite 4.1Yes
- Granite 3.0Yes
- GPT-OSSYes
- GLM-5 / GLM-5.1No
- GLM-4.7 / GLM-Z1Yes, but it is tight
- Gemma 4Yes, but it is tight
- Gemma 3nYes
- Gemma 3Yes, but it is tight
- Gemma 2 FamilyYes
- Falcon 3Yes
- EXAONE 3.5Yes
- DevstralYes
- DeepSeek R1Yes
- DeepSeek-OCRYes — comfortably
- Cosmos 3Yes, but it is tight
- Cogito v1Yes, but it is tight
- CodestralYes
- Bonsai 27BYes — comfortably
- BitNet b1.58Yes — comfortably
- Aya ExpanseYes