This article was originally published on Best GPU for LLM . The full version with interactive tools, FAQ, and live pricing is on the original site. Llama 4 is Meta's most capable open model yet — and its Mixture-of-Experts architecture makes it more accessible than the parameter count suggests. The RTX 5090 is the best GPU for Llama 4 Scout locally , with 32GB VRAM fitting the full Q4 quantization. Maverick is a different story: at 400B total parameters, it requires multi-GPU or cloud. See the recommended pick on the original guide Understanding Llama 4's MoE architecture Llama 4's Mixture-of-Experts design is the key to understanding its hardware requirements. Unlike dense models where every parameter activates for every token, MoE models route each token through only a subset of "expert" layers. Scout (109B total, 17B active) — 109B parameters exist in memory, but only 17B activate per token. Inference speed resembles a 17B dense model, but you still need VRAM to hold all 109B weights.…