Oh yeah, 16 GB of VRAM is a strange spot to be in. Most of the focus goes onto the models that fit in 24 GB cards.
Qwen 3.6 35b-a3b is pretty solid when you don't have enough VRAM for a dense model. Most of the weights can be left in RAM and it still runs really quickly.
Since you mention using Ollama, you probably aren't running actual deepseek on your pc. Ollama took a Qwen model that was finetuned using deepseek output and named it deepseek.
Those are pretty out of date models at this point. Right now, the model most people would recommend for consumer gaming hardware is Qwen 3.6 27b.
My phone is in my lap while driving all the time because I take it out of my back pocket to not squish it when sitting down and I don't have anywhere else to put it. Usually I remember to tuck it down beneath my legs, but sometimes I forget.
You didn't go there for a tube of toothpaste, you went there for a trunkful of toothpaste. You need to be well-stocked in case of emergencies.