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Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

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Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#251
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at an org that had a substantial on-prem GPU datacenter. We transitioned to with a substantial negotiated discount rate, with part of the contract being we would sell them all of our hardware and not purchase any more.

> and not purchase any more. why would anyone sign such a contract?

Short term thoughtset MBAs.

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doubtful they can, based on current inference prices. An H100 draws about 50W while idling, which is ~$8/month at average US electricity prices. They also draw ~400W while active. The electricity prices are relevant because if you paid $0 for your H100 and didn't use it a single time, you could buy millions of tokens in inference just on the electricity it draws while idling. If you can't keep that thing saturate…

Most houses have a 200amp panel and extra space for larger breakers. A electrician can plop in a electric car charger for instance, that is a 40-50 amp circuit.

Newer houses yes probably have the overhead. We put in a charger for my wife (because she drives 100 miles a day we needed a pretty beefy level 2) and had to replace our whole panel because 1) we had 125A so failed the load calc and 2) we had the infamous Zinsco panels and the electricians refused to squeeze one in even if we did pass the load calculations. Luckily we had a basement so they only had to extend the circuits a little instead of rerunning them all over the house.

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#254
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, I was doing conservative napkin math, better safe than burnt to a crisp, as grandpa NEVER said... I'm currently having to rewire a lot of the house that he built and I bought so he could retire. There have been a lot of electrical issues that the inspection never found.

He hated outlets, and hardwired almost every appliance directly into whatever circuit was closest that fit the amperage, including literally cutting the plug off a cord, to nut the wires directly into the Romex.

I still haven't found what circuit my range hood is on. I turned off all 120V and it remained blowing, and knowing grandpa, he powered it off a single leg of a 240V. And I know he didn't use junction boxes, so the splices are likely all inside the walls.

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#255
post #58

All indications are there will be a lot of repossessed GPUs appearing on the market before too long. Likely to be messy for a while but will open up a lot of possibilities when it’s easy to get your hands on some secondhand GPUs.

What are people going to do with all the GPUs? I guess we'll all have really good gaming rigs, lol. Sincerely, perhaps there will be a new flood of crypto farms, which I suppose would drive the prices of crypto down. Other ideas for what changes are enabled by massive supply of cheap GPUs?

Run AI locally instead of in cloud

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#256
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doubtful they can, based on current inference prices. An H100 draws about 50W while idling, which is ~$8/month at average US electricity prices. They also draw ~400W while active. The electricity prices are relevant because if you paid $0 for your H100 and didn't use it a single time, you could buy millions of tokens in inference just on the electricity it draws while idling. If you can't keep that thing saturate…

I'd imagine that you can have the power to the board shut off when not in use. But I never assumed it was to be cost competitive at current token rates. I assumed it was for the same reasons people might use open source hardware. Freedom to tinker, etc.

Basically sounds like a hobo version of PCI-e hotswapping which is a thing on enterprise motherboards but not many consumer boards. Also depends on if the board can actually power off the slots which I'm not sure many are setup to do.

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#257
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and not purchase any more. why would anyone sign such a contract?

I don't know if this was IT shrugging me off or if it was something real but some IT person at this big ISP I worked at told me that they cannot just buy an SSD — my windows box at work was running off of a hard disk in 2019 — and that there was some contract that said any computer hardware we bought had to be through HP or something like that and it takes many months it something like that.

We could only book our business travel through American Express. It must have made economic sense at the c suite level, I wasn't seeing it at my level, the flights were consistently more expensive.

Re: Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

#259
post #81

Isn't it worth exactly what you can sell it for. a few ways to do this. slow and awkward, best market match: The auction. sell to highest bidder. faster and more customer friendly but poor market match until a lot of units sold: The store. guess price, adjust up or down to reach sell frequency desired. fast and good market match but takes a knowledgeable customer base: The reverse auction. Start with price too high l…

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