Absolutely, 7B will run comfortably on 16GB of RAM and most consumer level hardware. Some of the 40B run on 32GB, but it depends on the model I found (GGUF, crossing fingers help).
I ran this originally on a M1 with 32GB, I run this on an Air M2 with 16GB (and mac mini M2 32GB), no problem.
I use llama.cpp with a SwiftUI interface (my own), all native, no scripts python/js/web.
7b is obviously less capable but the instant response makes it worth exploring. It's very useful as a Google search replacement that is instantly more valuable, for general questions, than dealing with the hellscape of blog spam ruling Google atm.
Note, for my complex code queries at $dayjob where time is of the essence, I still use GPT4 plus, which is still unmatched imho, without running special hardware at least.
