Time to dig up the spreadsheet models of what dark fiber is worth.
Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
41–50 of 285 posts
Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't that be crazy - a hobbyist market for H100s? Maybe someone could start a business buying up and rehousing these.
The GPU alone has a TDP of 700W, together with everything else (CPU, RAM, storage, fans) you're looking at 1500W+. Depending on the country, that may be enough to saturate your home's electricity uplink...
A typical hair dryer uses about 1500W. I guess GPUs are mechanically not much different from a hair dryer.
Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
#43> Silent data corruption (SDC) is the most expensive, where a faulty GPU produces wrong answers without crashing anything, which means a multi-day training run can complete normally and the resulting model weights are quietly poisoned.
Anyone know how these get caught ultimately?
Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
#44The relatively slow depreciation of GPU value is an artifact of supply constraints. If you run fp4 inference and could choose freely between Hopper and a Rubin, the performance per watt would make the Hopper unattractive even if you paid zero for the hardware and only for the power. You can't get the Rubin, or even the Blackwell, so you will pay for the H100 but this won't last if fabs ramp up capacity.
I wonder what shovels were worth after the Gold Rush faltered. Blacksmiths probably had all the scrap iron they could ever care for.
Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
#45[flagged]
That still doesn't tell you what GPUs will be worth in 5 years, because it depends upon what inference demand is like and what the alternatives are. What will an hour of NVL72 be worth in 2029? (And other things, that we know partially but not fully-- like what failure rate for current generation parts will be under this loading). So we have big uncertainties about the revenue, moderate uncertainty about the proporti…
Nobody knows what anything is going to be worth in 5 years.
Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
#46Given the price for a rack of bc-250 after the crypto hype cycle, the expected value of the hardware will be around 5% to 10% of the original retail price.
Without other market influences, that is a >90% expected discount when the over-provisioned market must inevitably self-correct.
If the Market follows what Samsung/SK Hynix did to the South Korean exchange this week, than the "AI" bubble will hit harder than the dot com crash.
I like the Shrek Movie correlation theory, as they always happen just before Debt-backed investors get hit hard... And the new film is due out in 2027. =3
Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hell no. 1.5kw is half a socket capacity. A heat pump or many kitchen appliances are using much more. Our car charger uses more as well.
That's why they said "depending on country" In North America we are on 120V, making a standard 15A outlet only 1500W max, and something like 1200W sustained. To use higher wattage appliances, we have to upgrade our outlets to 20A (2000/1600W) or up our voltage to 240V, but that carries a different set of plugs and outlets as well.
> In North America we are on 120V, making a standard 15A outlet only 1500W max, and something like 1200W sustained.
It's 1800W for short periods and 1500W sustained.
Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
#48One data point: 512GB Mac Studios are selling on ebay for double what they were selling for new at the beginning of the year.
Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
#49Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
#50I half expect Nvidia to have buyback contacts like Ferrari with the larger customers to prevent a price crash when they all upgrade and to keep them scarce. I hope not though, perhaps I can pick up a H100 in a few years if they get sold on the open market.
That should be illegal. Sounds like a very fraudulent business tactic.
Would you call a trade-in a fraudulent tactic?