Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself? • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#41

Post by beachy » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 2:57 AM UTC

ChickeNES wrote: post #16

chasd00 wrote: post #11

Not a fair comparison really. If you can run a model locally then you can somewhat train out the guardrails, censorship, and brand-safety. That has value a subscription does not. Idk about the quality of this setup but just pasting it here as an example. https://explainx.ai/blog/heretic-llm-abliteration-guide-2026

> If you can run a model locally then you can somewhat train out the guardrails, censorship, and brand-safety. When does the average person actually need to do that?

I just got some kind of cyber alert from Claude and was forced back down to Opus while I was trying to connect to a battery I own via bluetooth.

So I can certainly understand why someone would want the guardrails gone.

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#42

Post by serial_dev » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 2:57 AM UTC

In the “The small print that isn't small” you describe all the disadvantages of running your models locally, but none of the advantages (just check the rest of the comment section for inspiration on that).

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#43

Post by rlindsey123 » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 2:58 AM UTC

jrflo wrote: post #3

43 years to break even on Qwen 3.8 at 25% the speed of the API, lol. I like the idea of local models for really small tasks like automation/toolcalling, but it will probably never make sense for coding. I tried them and it was just excruciating compared to what you get for $100 a month from a subscription.

Yeah it's surprising how long it would take to get back on those local models!

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#44

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 2:58 AM UTC

I was just gonna throw a beefy Ryzen into an ATX chassis. I don't want to pay Mac prices

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#45

Post by harhargange » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 2:58 AM UTC

Also, i also use my gpu for rendering and learning and playing games.

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#46

Post by catchnear4321 » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 2:59 AM UTC

jrecyclebin wrote: post #28

txrx0000 wrote: post #8

It pays off instantly , because OpenAI/Anthropic can no longer see what I'm doing and that's worth a lot of money to me. If I am offloading some of my thought processes to a machine, I want to own that machine. And if I finetune the model, I can gain access to parts of thought space that are cordoned off by OpenAI/Anthropic/Alibaba/whomever due to their "alignment" efforts (i.e. alignment to the AI company rather tha…

This was my thought as well. I have a local model monitoring my finances and personal wiki - things I wouldn't want Claude to touch - and the Qwen 3.5 9b handles it all just perfectly. I also needed a new device anyway - and having this much system memory to run virtual machines has been amazing. Am paying subscriptions as well tho lol.

Your last line is what drives the point home, though.

Local isn’t strictly about NOT lab. It’s rapidly becoming apples (though not just macs) to oranges to compare the to.

Which is why the premise is silly. To be underwater it would need to be a real comparison. It’s not, and the claude fartifact doesn’t make it so.

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#47

Post by mcone » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 3:00 AM UTC

rlindsey123 wrote: post #30

mcone wrote: post #7

The idea that you need a new machine is pretty ridiculous. I bought a used HP Omen with a 3090 last month for $2k. 57t/s with Qwen 3.8.

I've not heard of others running HP with it. Hows much RAM do you have?

This particular machine has 64GB, but the model is on the RTX 3090 with 24gb. Context is 156k with Pi mono.

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#48

Post by tyre » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 3:00 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #9

hyperhello wrote: post #2

I doubt it will ever be cost effective for the foreseeable future. The AI companies have astonishing amounts of compute and they’re effectively dumping it on the market.

"If they are selling it for less than it cost to make, buy as much as you can." -- Warren Buffett

For their current models, served directly from their infrastructure, they are profitable after training (which all present models are.)

I don't know when we'll have an open equivalent to Fable, let alone whatever (insane) hardware you'd need to run it locally.

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#49

Post by Zetaphor » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 3:01 AM UTC

This tells me that the max throughput for the models I'm running on my hardware is lower than it actually is. Please allow us to tweak all the variables instead of locking me in to whatever rate you found by searching

Re: Show HN: Sunk Cost – How long until a local LLM rig pays for itself?

#50

Post by ChickeNES » Tue, Sep 15, 2026, 3:01 AM UTC

txrx0000 wrote: post #8

It pays off instantly , because OpenAI/Anthropic can no longer see what I'm doing and that's worth a lot of money to me. If I am offloading some of my thought processes to a machine, I want to own that machine. And if I finetune the model, I can gain access to parts of thought space that are cordoned off by OpenAI/Anthropic/Alibaba/whomever due to their "alignment" efforts (i.e. alignment to the AI company rather tha…

For me, I'm glad they train on my stuff if it improves the model. Hell, I've been using tons of muse-spark-1.3-contributor for this very reason (and because it's a decent model for a bargain basement price)