While LLM (Large Language Model) is getting more and more popular, lots of people asks me how to setup home lab to train, fine tune, or inference LLM models. We will publish a few articles on how to setup different GPU backed single lab step by step.
In this article, we will work through the installation on how to turn a Windows gaming laptop into a LLM home lab.
The Laptop
The laptop we are using for this article is MSI GE65 Raider Gaming Laptop. It was bought around 2018. I cannot find an identical spec from MSI website today. Here are main hardware components built-in:
- CPU: Intel Core-i7
- Memory: 32GB
- GPU: RTX 2070 8GB
- Disk: 500GB
- OS: Microsoft Windows Home Edition
Overview
Installing LLM environments inside Windows environment is not yet a good idea due to lack of builds from vary key libraries. The most popular practice is to use WSL2 with Linux. If you don’t familiar with WSL2 installation, please refer to below article.