Running Gemma 4 26B at 5 tokens/sec on a 13-year-old Xeon with no GPU

Global Tech Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:29:25 GMT Moderate confidence — 64/100

There’s a server in my basement that has no business running a modern language model.
It’s a repurposed HP StoreVirtual storage box, roughly thirteen years old, two Ivy Bridge Xeons, no GPU.
It was built to hold disks, not do math.

Unverified

There’s a server in my basement that has no business running a modern language model.
It’s a repurposed HP StoreVirtual storage box, roughly thirteen years old, two Ivy Bridge Xeons, no GPU.
It was built to hold disks, not do math.

Sources: Neomindlabs