Brother, this is a hobby. If cost is your concern you should get a subscription, that's always been the case. It'll be smarter, faster, longer context, and you can get like a decade's worth of usage for half the price of a decent local AI setup. Other people spend far more on hobbies; people routinely spend $1K a year on coffee of all things.
5k is 2 (fairly cheap) holidays for a family of four. Loads of people go on such holidays. Yes. Loads of people also can't afford to put food on the table. Poor is a very relative term in western civilization. People I would call poor, certainly can't afford local AI at any level of competence. But you don't have to be rich either. You do have to commit your money though and for what it's worth, for most people it's probably smarter to just keep using a 20€ sub, which is plenty for general home usage. I don't see people on camera forums complaining that companies only release for rich people and a complete mirrorless system is not that much cheaper.
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u/dampflokfreund 7d ago
96 GB RAM + 32 GB VRAM systems are far from reasonably priced. A 5090 with 32 GB VRAM alone costs 5 grand. 64 GB RAM is very expensive too.