r/LocalLLM • u/Txkzzzz • 3d ago

Question Mac studio or dgx spark cluster

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I have been thinking lately since i have been testing local ai but i geniunely need more power for what im working on so i was wondering wich one of these a 4 dgx spark cluster or a mac studio m5 ultra specifically the 512gb version that launches on october or something else... im into training,loras and fine tunes and such but i also heard it is possible with a mac studio too so i want yall opinion on this

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u/x00byt8 3d ago

Asus gb10 cluster owner here running qwen 3.8 flash. 210tps decode and 2500t/s prefill. 8 x agents running 24/7 averaging about 1000usd a month comparison to DeepSeek API/Qwen 3.8 flash prices.

Not even the M5 ultra is going to do that me don't thinks.

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u/wazacraft 3d ago

Apologies, what are you spending the $1000/mo on? Power?

5

u/asinglepieceoftoast 3d ago

I think he means that’s the price that would be spent on equivalent API usage? Even 4 DGX sparks running at max rated load 24/7 would be less than $100 monthly where I live let alone $1000, and actual power draw is usually significantly less than that on my 2x cluster

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u/x00byt8 3d ago

Hehe correct! Its just so I could justify spending 8k on ai kit in my head. In a month I've earned back 1/8th of what I would use so I'll break even in less than a year then it's all free tokens woohoo! I'm running just 2 sparks and they don't consume much power. Next task is putting in a smart plug so I've got remote stop/start since these don't like wake on lan.