Comment by btbuildem

Last fall, seeing the writing on the wall, I pieced together an "AI" rig, 96GB ram, 2x RTX 3090, 9950X - not exactly top of the line, but it came in around CDN$3000 all in all, with most parts second hand. I don't think I could build that for CDN$10000 today.

I've been using it pretty steadily for a variety of personal projects, and the only improvement (aside from the obvious "more VRAM") I feel pressed to make is a portable AC unit / some kind of a focused cooling solution. The rig raises the ambient temperature in the office by 4C at least.

Now with the murmurs of even the large players reconsidering their AI spend, and usage-based pricing shifts, having a self-contained, owned, and independently administered compute resource is looking better and better.