How the picks work
Your four answers filter our tracked hardware database — currently 35 machines from $120 single-board computers to $9,500 workstations, including the used market. You get up to three picks: Best value (the cheapest thing that genuinely does the job), Faster pick (the most memory bandwidth your filters allow — bandwidth is what sets generation speed), and Room to grow (the biggest model ceiling within your answers).
Two honesty notes. First, "Not yet scored" means exactly that — we haven't finished a full review, so we show no number rather than a fake one. Second, if nothing matches, we say so and show the nearest miss instead of pretending; the usual culprit is wanting big models, new-with-warranty, on a small budget — the big-model bargains live in the used market.
After you have a shortlist
Sanity-check it against your actual plans: Can I run it? shows what each machine runs at which context, the cost calculator checks whether buying beats renting or the API at your usage, and the quant picker tells you which file to download on day one.