Builds / $50k tier

The home datacenter: local AI under $50k

Four fans of consequence. A silent 512GB frontier box, or four RTX 5090s that generate video while they chat. At this tier the question is not what can it run: everything runs. The question is what you will build with a private datacenter that draws less power than a space heater.

The candidates

The quad 5090 server rig

$7,996

Four RTX 5090s: 128GB of VRAM and 7,168 GB/s of aggregate bandwidth, for people who know what a power budget is.

Technical difficulty: 4/4 · server room

The $30k question

$11,998

The budget from the 'Mac Studios or Spark?' thread: one 512GB Mac Studio, the big models, no cloud bill.

Technical difficulty: 2/4 · seat and go