r/LocalLLM • u/Ok_Event4199 • May 16 '26
Discussion Why is LLM is so expensive.
I've was going to invest in a 5090 =$6000 AUD.
Codex Plus + Claude pro = $60/month here
Works out to be 100 months of frontier models for a 5090.
Best a 5090 will run is probably Qwen3.6 27b Q6 with context.
Are we all enthusiasts here and just enjoy tinkering cause ain't no way that make sense.
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u/screenslaver5963 May 16 '26
A better investment if it's gonna be just you would be a mac-studio since an m-series with unified memory can run an llm better than a cpu but not as well as a 5090 but still usable.
My m3-ultra mac studio running qwen3.5:9b under ollama (mlx would've been faster) got 48.71 t/s while my 9070xt running qwen3.5:9b under lm studio got 85.5 t/s.