Comment by lelanthran
1 day ago
> There may be healthy margins for them but I would bet it’s always going to be relatively cheaper for me to pay for the compute rather than manage it myself.
Depends almost completely on usage. No one is renting out hardware 24x7 and making a loss on it.
If you only have sporadic use then renting is better. If you're running it almost all the time of purchasing it outright is better.
Sure but we were talking about gaming rigs to run models locally. You are describing some extreme edge folks that are keeping 24/7 work on gaming rigs in your home.
> Sure but we were talking about gaming rigs to run models locally. You are describing some extreme edge folks that are keeping 24/7 work on gaming rigs in your home.
In that scenario the case is even weaker for the rented-hardware model - if you're going to have a gaming rig, you're only paying a little bit more on top for a GPU with more RAM, not the full cost of the rig.
The comparison then is the extra cost of using a 24GB GPU over a standard gaming rig GPU (12GB? 8GB?) versus the cost of renting the GPU whenever you need it.
Honestly not sure what you are talking about.
I could either spend $20 a month for my cursor license.
Or
Spend $2k+ upfront to build a machine to run models locally. Pay for the electricity cost and time to set both the machine and software up.
2 replies →