[naillo]

8x4090 machines should be a lot cheaper than that. 1599*8=12,792. I.e. closer to 16x4090 machines. Sure labor is worth something but he has it in cash, and also there's barely a lot of people (yet) paying high prices for research (non ML ops) labor hours for this yet so the salary wouldn't be that high anyway.

Just a pet peeve when ppl under exaggerate how many gpus/flops a dollar can buy (if you're slighly smart with your money).

[junipertea]

What about PSU to power all of this, GPU motherboards, SSDs, CPU to not bottleneck this and sufficient RAM? You could argue it's more than 8, but definitely not 16. To utilize those GPUs to the max you need memory bandwidth to even feed it enough data.

[fyloraspit]

Yeh I built a dual 3090 machine and just to have those 2 cards run well cost a lot for all the other stuff. Workstation spec mobo, top tier PSU, CPU and memory with headroom for the system, not to mention storage and case and cooling. And this is just a hobbyist build. Cost would have easily doubled if I actually got server grade CPU and memory etc.

[redox99]

Meh, I was just ballparking. But add a threadripper, compatible motherboard, lots of RAM, fast storage, a few beast PSUs, and tax, and you're probably around 18k. So you ain't getting 2 of these machines for 25k.

Plus you'll need to set aside some money for the power bill lol

[bcatanzaro]

Also possibly upgrading the wiring in your house or office.