7 Ways to Prepare Your PC for AI Without Losing Privacy or Speed

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now no longer a futuristic idea; rather, it has become a part of our daily life. With tools like ChatGPT, and Google Gemini, you have the ability to research anything. 

However, AI tools and platforms take up a lot of space, which ultimately slows down your PC and strains storage. If you are tech-savvy, then it will be easier for you to grasp that preparing your PC for AI tools is a necessity of this era. It’s not just about hardware upgrades; rather, it’s about optimizing the performance and ensuring that this tech works for you. 

Here are seven effective ways to prepare your PC for AI—without sacrificing privacy or speed. 

1. Upgrade to a CPU or GPU That Supports Built-In AI

There are two ways in which Modern AI tools function:

• Cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) requires the internet. 
• On-device AI, which can run smoothly on your processor

Though, on-device AI is the future because of its speed and privacy protection. 

What to look for?

• Intel Core Ultra, which comes along with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). It is specifically designed to cater to AI workloads. 
• Moreover, AMD Ryzen 7040/8040 series also comes with a functional NPU. 
• NVIDIA RTX GPUs that are suitable for generative AI tools and tasks such as image generation, 3D tools, and upscaling video quality.
  

Why does it matter?

Artificial Intelligence apps like DaVinci Resolve, Windows AI features, and Adobe Firefly keep your data local and safe, instead of transferring everything to the cloud. 

2. Add More RAM

AI tools are memory-intensive and can quickly overwhelm older systems. AI assistants, AI-enabled browsers, and large language models cause slowdowns as they push systems to 80-90% of memory usage. 

Let’s have a look at the minimum recommended RAM in 2025; 

• If you are a basic user using AI for remote office work, browsing, and AI assistants, the required RAM would be 16 GB. 
• 32 GB of RAM is required for professional coders, power users, and content creators. 
• On the other hand, more than 64 GB RAM is required to use LLM models, video generation, and to develop AI images. 

Thus, all the modern apps like VS Code, Figma, Google Colab Notebook, and Photoshop Chrome use AI plugins. Hence, if your PC freezes while running, adding more RAM is the fastest way to fix it. 

3. Free Up 30–40 GB of Storage for AI Models

AI apps store caches, temporary files, and local AI models, along with browser AI databases. 

Thus, it can consume gigabytes of space. The most recommended are 

• Free 30-40 GB space at all times 
• As AI tools depend more on fast read and write operations, it’s better to use a Solid State Drive (SSD) and not a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). 
• If you are performing long-term AI-driven tasks, you must upgrade to 1 TB NVMe SSD
  

4. Strengthen Your Privacy Settings

AI platforms and tools require permissions to access the clipboard, file system, browser activity, voice input, screen capture, and locate the data. 

Thus, if you agree with all of the above accesses, you are directly giving AI apps the power to fully access your digital data. 

What can you do? 

If you are using the Windows 11 version, you must go to the settings of your PC and then click on the privacy and security option. 

Then adjust the settings, like 

• App permissions
• Clipboard sharing access
• Microphone and camera access
• Diagnostic data
• Cloud sync option

On Chrome and Edge browsers, disable the third-party cookies, autofill the collection that you do not need, and remove unnecessary AI modules. 

Moreover, you must enable settings like privacy sandbox controls and tracking prevention. 

By this way you can leverage all the AI features without the need of transferring your entire digital data to any unknown server.

5. Use Local AI Models When Possible to Avoid Cloud Data Collection

Furthermore, Cloud AI means that your conversations are logged, you are dependent on an internet connection, and your data leaves your own device. While local AI models ensure that all data is private, they are faster for repeated tasks, also work offline, and use your computer’s NPU or GPU. 

Additionally, examples of the best local AI tools in 2025 are LM Studio, Ollama (local AI for both Mac and Windows), Local Stable Diffusion used for image generation, and GPT4All. 

Usage of local AI tools is perfect for summary tasks, idea generation, writing and rewriting emails, and offline productivity. On the other hand, Cloud AI is perfect for research tasks, real-time search, and web-connected queries.

6. Reduce Apps For High AI Responsiveness 

AI tools run background services such as AI-driven voice assistants, AI search indexing, and AI recommendations. Hence, these services reduce the available RAM and slow down the reboot. 

You can easily fix this issue in your Windows PC by going to the Task Manager and then selecting the option of Startup Apps. AI-driven tasks, including running Copilot, generating images, and summarizing documents can run much faster because CPU and RAM are free. 

Thus, disable anything that you do not use regularly, like Steam, Adobe Creative Cloud, Discord server, Epic Games, third-party updaters, and Spotify. 

7. Update Your Drivers

AI tools and features heavily depend on GPU drivers, firmware improvements, NPU optimization, OS patches, and security fixes. In addition, if your PC is outdated, the AI-driven apps might crash, produce low-quality results, run slowly, and fail to detect any hardware accelerators.  

For Windows updates, always install cumulative updates, feature updates, and security patches. While updating your GPU drivers, install NVIDIA, Intel GPU, and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices). Moreover, GPU updates most often come with AI acceleration improvements.

When you update BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), it often adds hardware-level AI, improved stability for AI workloads, and better power efficiency.