Running modern AI models locally on older hardware sounds almost impossible. But with smaller models like Gemma 4 and tools like Ollama, local AI is starting to become surprisingly accessible even on aging machines. I still have my old desktop computer, bought back in 2015. It is still fast enough for development and even for playing some of my favorite games. At this point, it feels like a member of the family (it’s actually older than my oldest kid). The only thing it could never really handle was running AI models locally. But now, models seem to be getting much more friendly toward older CPUs, GPUs, and limited RAM, so I finally decided to give it a try with Gemma 4. I want to create a whole series around Gemma 4. First, I’ll explore how to run Gemma 4 locally on older hardware and benchmark it to see whether it is actually usable and which model variants work best for my specific setup. Then, I want to build something useful where Gemma 4 becomes the core of the application. So, let’s dive in.…