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Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

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Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#111
Stuff like this + OpenClaw with Mac Minis a while back is sort of exposing a probable local AI flywheel waiting to happen.

Someone needs to solve proper distribution of packaged GPUs with some Tesla-like wall connector for a consumer grade box that is plug and play.

Maybe John Ternus ends up doing that at Apple since they sit closer to this consumer profile.

Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#112
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a single mention of gaming. No wonder gamers hate AI bros.

I have a second computer with an RTX 4090 for gaming (running Windows). I also used the new RTX 5090 running Linux to evaluate whether Proton/Wine allow me to run Windows games on linux (yes, it works, but the compatibility and frame rate issues make me stick to native Windows for now).

If you want a GPU that has comparable performance on Linux to Windows- you want AMD. NVIDIA drivers are notoriously bad. Many of my games run better on Linux with the open source AMd drivers. (CachyOS rolling rolling rolling).

Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#113
UPDATE: Launch was a success! 400K+ views, and multiple companies reached to use my IP. Read more here

It seems that he managed to get what he wanted from the hardware and I'm happy for them.

He said something interesting at the beginning of his post, he compared the cost of the hardware to the cost of his time based on his FAANG salary. Which is an interesting way to think of this, but the rest of the article didn't make me understand if at the end he did save money/time based compared to just rend on the cloud.

Also, outside of the power cost, hardware has other costs too, you need to operate it, maintain it, set it up, etc. all that require time. I mean, even the process of figuring out if it had a good enough ROI compared to cloud, takes from your time (collecting data, analyzing data, etc etc).

Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#114

In the last year, I have bought an M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 512 GB, a Macbook Pro M5 MAX with 128 GB and an RTX 6000 Pro. I have spent around $25k so far, not including electricity. I figured worst case scenario I can sell them in the next year and only take a haircut as opposed to losing my entire investment. In comparison to just spending for tokens, the tokens would have been much cheaper and much much faster. I'v…

I’m not usually one to ask this because learning to do a thing can be fun, but why exactly have you spent 25 thousand dollars on getting an LLM someone else made to answer maths exam questions?

I’ve spent twice that on hosting movies and tv for Plex, so… I think they are worthy of my praise. What a healthy outlet for money.

Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#115

In the last year, I have bought an M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 512 GB, a Macbook Pro M5 MAX with 128 GB and an RTX 6000 Pro. I have spent around $25k so far, not including electricity. I figured worst case scenario I can sell them in the next year and only take a haircut as opposed to losing my entire investment. In comparison to just spending for tokens, the tokens would have been much cheaper and much much faster. I'v…

Running LLMs on Macs is still terribly slow. They simply lack the optimizations other platforms have.

An RTX 6000 pro Blackwell is a pretty good card

Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25k is definitely a lot but I did the risk analysis and I figured worst case I would lose a 1000-2000 after a year of playing around with it, so I look at it more like renting (I'm going to keep the Macbook Pro no matter what since I needed a new one).

Nitpicking, but the worst case of spending $25k is unforeseen circumstances that write off the entire asset. I don’t think -$2000 is a conservative enough figure for standard depreciation either (a lot can happen in a year)

Either I don't understand the used apple market.. or I agree this is crazy. Someone spends $25k on new hardware, waits a year, and expects to sell it for $23k? Unless the ram issues save him, and cost of new goes up, I don't see how that was going to work.

Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#117
post #30
post #20

So some things have changed since this rig was first built (2024). The most relevant is that $6800 RTX 6000 Ada 48GB has arguably been supplanted by the $9500 RTX 6000 Pro 96GB. The Ada has a memory bandwidth of 960GB/s. The Pro has 1.8TB/s and about 40-50% better performance so is at least equivalent in processing power, much better in memory bandwidth (important for inference) and can hold larger models on a single…

I am also considering to buy 3-4x RTX 6000 Pro 96GB plus some Ryzen workstation with a grant. Is this the best general-purpose choice as of 2026 with $50k for training, fine-tuning and running large open models?

[flagged]

Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25k is definitely a lot but I did the risk analysis and I figured worst case I would lose a 1000-2000 after a year of playing around with it, so I look at it more like renting (I'm going to keep the Macbook Pro no matter what since I needed a new one).

Nitpicking, but the worst case of spending $25k is unforeseen circumstances that write off the entire asset. I don’t think -$2000 is a conservative enough figure for standard depreciation either (a lot can happen in a year)

> I don’t think -$2000 is a conservative enough figure for standard depreciation either (a lot can happen in a year)

We aren't exactly in "standard" times and haven't been for quite a while. Even five year old graphics cards are worth more today than they were just a year ago. Things will obviously depreciate at some point, but you gotta throw your existing notions of how quickly and how much hardware will depreciate out the window. There's just been too much money dumped into AI for a "well I guess this won't ever pan out, let's dump all this hardware to recoup our costs" moment to happen and tank the price of everything suddenly IMO.

And that's not even getting into the other geopolitical stuff going on right now. Strange times.

Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#119

In the last year, I have bought an M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 512 GB, a Macbook Pro M5 MAX with 128 GB and an RTX 6000 Pro. I have spent around $25k so far, not including electricity. I figured worst case scenario I can sell them in the next year and only take a haircut as opposed to losing my entire investment. In comparison to just spending for tokens, the tokens would have been much cheaper and much much faster. I'v…

Running LLMs on Macs is still terribly slow. They simply lack the optimizations other platforms have. An RTX 6000 pro Blackwell is a pretty good card

A M3 ultra mac Studio can run models that do not fit in similarly priced computers with multiple Nvidia GPUs. And it will use a lot less electricity while still having good enough performance. Except the pre-filing perfs that are quite poor on the M3.

Re: Was my $48K GPU server worth it?

#120
post #7

I have four old 24gb Nvidia cards. They're not great but they're not useless either. The problem is that I haven't really figured out a good way to actually use them. Genuine question; would anyone here recommend any specific motherboard to best utilize these cards?

You could ask AI and get pretty far reading the answer.
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