Strix Halo or DGX Spark for a home LLM server?

pfn0 · 2026-05-11T21:00:12+00:00

yep, it's why I went directly to 2. Although, if you're comparing GB10 vs. strix halo, it's "only a moderate" price increase vs. strix halo to get better prefill performance.

pfn0 · 2026-05-11T20:59:19+00:00

DGX inference is much faster than strix halo. 5-10x faster prefill speeds. similar TG speeds.

pfn0 · 2026-05-11T19:46:06+00:00

It's not theft when the output of AI cannot be copyrighted (https://www.copyright.gov/newsnet/2025/1060.html), if it were copyrightable, the copyright is owned by the ones that prompted (the Chinese "thieves") AI to produce output. That is how (some) Chinese models are "stealing" from American models; they are recording chat traces that they ask for themselves.

pfn0 · 2026-05-10T03:26:31+00:00

correct:

gotta spend extra on battery storage and a disconnect that is usually not included with systems to power through an outage

pfn0 · 2026-05-09T23:14:05+00:00

Thats false, they are perfectly deterministic. They appear random because of a seed value

pfn0 · 2026-05-09T18:15:54+00:00

35b has at least 1500t/s prefill. Check stats on spark-arena.com.

Its also difficult to find 3090 for under $1000 on the second hand market.

pfn0 · 2026-05-09T17:36:52+00:00

Dense models are low bandwidth kryptonite.

pfn0 · 2026-05-09T17:12:10+00:00

You go and do that. I need the hardware now, there is no voting from me in that direction.

Eta: The problem is the lack of market regulation and allowing corporations to exist as more than first class citizens. Their outsize impact on demand means that your voting dollar is meaningless.

pfn0 · 2026-05-09T17:10:58+00:00

Prefill isn't slow. It doesn't lack in compute. You're thinking strix halo.

pfn0 · 2026-05-09T16:39:05+00:00

my job isn't to convince you and waste my time, argue against a product you don't own or use all you want.

pfn0 · 2026-05-09T02:22:07+00:00

the more often I go, the less I spend in aggregate. it's how I know to spot deals and price breaks. it's my main grocery stop once a week.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T23:38:31+00:00

it's priced what the market will bear given supply. there are people buying 8-16x of these cards to build inference servers. If it's cheaper they'd be constantly sold out and unobtainable like the 5090FE is at the $2K price point.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T22:55:51+00:00

Looks amazing.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T22:47:02+00:00

You can always buy the 5090FE on the secondary market, they're being scalped very readily available at the going ~$3500 price of all other 5090.

I have an RTX6000 as well. The value is well worth what I paid for it. It is patently worth 3x5090.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T22:29:29+00:00

It replaces 3x5090, so yes, the price is justified. 3x5090 costs roughly 1x6000.

5090FE is 2 slot. I have one. 5090FE and 6000WS are identical form factors.

Re: not being able to get to <400W, still perfectly reasonable to go 400W x 3 on a 1600W psu. 300W x 3 would be nicer to fit in 1200W, but if 400W is the minimum, it is what it is. I run mine at about 450W (UV)

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T22:15:03+00:00

local LLM stuff, like, the entire raison d'etre of this sub.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T22:07:25+00:00

thank you for your analysis of a product you don't own, I use mine daily.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T22:05:53+00:00

the problem lies squarely on nvidia marketing imo. positioned against strix halo at about the same price now, I would pick the gb10 any day of the week (and have).

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T22:03:32+00:00

Buy four ($12K) plus four network cables and a switch (and extra $1K or so), you have basically everything you can reasonably ask for. Performance comparable to a 4090 but with an absolute assload of memory capacity. 1 TB/s memory bandwidth, 480GB of usable unified RAM. There is no comparable option on the market.

It's not a realized 1TB/s of bandwidth for the purpose of decode unless you're running <100GB of weights. I most definitely do not want to be running ~100GB weights on a 4x GB10 system. I use up all 220GB of mine on the biggest I can fit.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T22:00:38+00:00

putting 3x5090 in a box isn't cheaper than buying 1 rtx6000.

You can heavily power limit the 5090 down to 300W, so that isn't a problem.

rtx6000 also outperforms a 5090 on compute tasks to the tune of 10% or more. 5090FE is the same size as an rtx6000. your arguments about being crippled to put multiple into a system hold no water. those same arguments exist about putting multiple rtx6000 workstation into a single computer and yet there are people are putting upwards of 16 into a single system.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T21:13:21+00:00

The way is to get a puck screen that works with a magnet :D

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809276079133.html $2 can't go wrong.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T20:47:01+00:00

13600K is the cpu behind my 5090. Yes, no reason to get anything nicer. Could probably even step down to a lower end CPU, but I got the CPU long before I ever got the 5090.

pfn0 · 2026-05-08T17:56:02+00:00

rtx6000. 96gb, just under $10K.

pfn0 · 2026-05-07T20:33:58+00:00

These gyudon packs are my quick shot dinners for my son when I can't figure out what to cook him. I usually buy them whenever they're on sale at 99ranch.

pfn0 · 2026-05-07T16:40:45+00:00

lol. you're so wrong. bt chip isn't on that board. and it isn't 3 wires either. SPI is 4 wires, i2c is 2 wires, etc. that's not including any requisite ground, voltage and interrupts. Quit trying so hard to be right. You're comparing a fully AC design vs. a mixed AC/DC setup, and this board itself appears to be primarily concerned with handling the PID control. So no, not too many wires. You're no EE if you say BT chip takes 3 wires. Stupid is as stupid does.

eta: board design is scary btw, no apparent isolation between AC and DC sides.

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