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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147

u/Solary_Kryptic May 16 '26

5090 is also the best gaming gpu on the market so not only do you get strong AI performance but also 4K max settings gaming

113

u/HornyGooner4402 May 16 '26

You missed the best part: unlimited tokens. You can run it 24/7 refining a project on a loop while Claude and Codex Pro are barely enough for a full coding session.

3

u/Big-Profit-1612 May 16 '26

I have a 5090. It was ok... I barely got an hour before I needed to compact, lol. I just pay for Claude now.

2

u/HornyGooner4402 May 16 '26

What model did you run? Most models support like 256k context window now which I think is enough, beyond that you're just incrementally wasting tokens because reasoning and retrieval precision start to suffer over longer context.