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Prices doubled in six months and Apple killed off the 128GB Mac. What to buy at each budget, and what it can actually run. #
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[.]here A year ago the standard advice for running AI at home was a used RTX 3090 for around a 1000 dollars, or a 64GB Mac Mini. Half of that is dead now. Apple cut the 64GB Mac Mini and discontinued the 128GB Mac Studio. A 32GB memory kit that ran about $100 last summer is closer to $400 today. And the RTX 5090, $1,999 at launch, now sells for $3,500 to $5,000 because of the memory it ships with.
If you were about to buy something to run models locally, the ground moved under you. Most guides you will find were written before the market shifted. The shortage flipped the hardware rankings. The most expensive consumer card is now a poor deal, and a five-year-old GPU is the best. Here is the map that still works, budget by budget, with what each one runs, and every price checked this month.
The datacenter tax on consumer hardware #
AI datacenters take around 70 percent of global memory supply. The high-bandwidth memory they need for…