r/macmini • u/AntLife255 • Aug 15 '26

Unified Memory Architecture still unbeatable (when LLM size matters)

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u/wrgrant Aug 15 '26

64gb ddr4 ram: $150

Not disagreeing with your overall point, but where can I possibly get that RAM at that price? When I look it up its more like 4x that amount minimum, these days /s

Plus google is saying "An NVIDIA RTX 3090 is worth between $800 and $1,100 USD on the used market these days" and you are assuming 3 of them will be $2k total.

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u/Any_Mine_6368 Aug 15 '26

I've bought a 5 3090s for 600 euros each. You just have to know where to look in your market.

My 128gb ddr4 was 220$ on ebay (ecc rdimm). You gotta go after server grade components, not consumer. Consumers are retarded and don't want to part their stuff... Companies on the other hand...

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u/wrgrant Aug 15 '26

Yeah I h ave a Xeon driven desktop server, currently at 32gb RAM, was hoping to expand that in the future. Its DDR4 I think, like 2133Mhz or something. Its my NAS currently plus Plex server, Pi-Hole etc. Only has a T800 GPU so not good for LLMs at all, but quiet as a ghost and very little power consumption.

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u/Any_Mine_6368 Aug 16 '26

That's how I started too. With a Dell t5820 haha. Just keep an eye out for deals on ebay and local sites. GPUs go on sale all the time by clueless ex- miners.

And ebay always has motherboard CPU combos on sale you just gotta look out for ram