On the one hand, I get that this is very much an ‘enthusiast’ sub, and many of you are doing this because you were the type to have a 4090 already.
On the other, as someone interested in LLMs, stable diffusion and AI, I’m not sure if investing in the hardware to run these things locally makes economic sense at all. I spec’d out a damned nice workstation at microcenter the other day and the bill was over $4000. Even the gpu alone was over $1700.
If you take a really sober look at the numbers, how does running your own system make sense over renting hardware at runpod or a similar service? The overall sentiment I get from reading the posts here is that a large majority of users here are using their 3090’s to crank out smut. Hey, no judgement, but do you really think runpod cares what you run as long as it doesn’t put them in legal jeopardy?
A 4090 is $.50/hr on some services. Even if you assumed 10h / wk of usage over like 5 years that’s still probably less than the depreciation and power usage of running it locally.
TLDR: I know some of you are doing this simply ‘because you can’ but the value proposition looks sketchy as an outsider.
Growing your own vegetables doesn’t make economic sense either. If you spent half the time it took to till, plant, water, weed and harvest working a regular job, you could buy at least twice as many vegetables. Worse if you have to buy or rent the land too. And yet, many people do it.
Humans often don’t do the cost effective things, preferring a DIY approach because it gives a sense of achievement and independence. It’s an attitude more prevalent in the US than in Europe but I prefer it over the "I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better " Schwabian dystopia.