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[Sorry for the delay in posts, I\u2019ve been really busy lately with my wife on travel, though you\u2019d be excused if you thought I was doing a victory dance about about the SpaceX IPO<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve read my monthly updates, you might have noticed that I have been writing more about AI as my main hobby. I use it to do all kinds of side projects. Some side projects don\u2019t see the light of day. For example, I still have a book series that I\u2019m working on (but haven\u2019t touched it in two months). I have a life guide for my kids that is basically done. I could go back and adjust it infinitely, though.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve become more interested in image and movie generation. For the most part, I just want to play around with it and see what\u2019s possible outside of the big companies\u2019 tools. The subscriptions for those add up very quickly when you are making video.<\/p>\n Most of all, I\u2019ve become interested in AI agents. They are more than chat. You can give them things to do, and they go do it. OpenClaw and Hermes Agent are two popular examples. For these, I\u2019d want a separate computer that\u2019s more powerful than my laptop. There\u2019s a reason why Nvidia has one of the largest market caps in the world, and it\u2019s because their GPUs are perfect for this kind of AI work.<\/p>\n When I was looking into buying this desktop, I did what I always do before spending real money, which is research the thing to death. That trait annoys my wife to no end, but it has paid dividends time and time again. Of course, I did this research with an AI, which has a fun circular irony.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the part that made me laugh at myself. I\u2019ve spent the better part of two decades writing about making money while I sleep. So I decided to look into whether this computer could do just that.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t want a gaming PC, but that\u2019s what I ended up buying. I wanted something specific, and the software decided the hardware.<\/p>\n The big one is running image (and maybe video) generation locally. Flux is an open-weight model you can run yourself through ComfyUI. I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019d do on it that I couldn\u2019t do with Google\u2019s Gemini or OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, but it\u2019s something I want to play with. My son is getting interested in learning Blender. Wikipedia describes it as \u201ca free and open-source 3D computer graphics software suite used for 3D modeling, animation, and rendering.\u201d A great graphics card makes it work much, much better.<\/p>\n I also wanted to run reasoning models on my own machine instead of paying API fees by the token. I have read about companies spending their annual AI budget on tokens in a couple of months. This makes my token cost just the cost of energy. And since we have solar power<\/a>, electricity is very cheap.<\/p>\n Open-source models like gpt-oss-20b and Qwen 3 are typically in the 20 to 30 billion parameter range. To be able to run these, you need a graphics card with about 16GB of memory. The cheapest Nvidia one with that is an RTX 5070 Ti, which is typically about a thousand dollars.<\/p>\n I wanted to try OpenClaw, the open-source agent that blew up earlier this year \u2014 the one that lives on your machine, remembers things between sessions, and actually does stuff instead of just answering questions. Hermes Agent seems to be very similar, and I\u2019m looking into that. Get Rich Slick<\/a> shows a lot of what it can do, and it\u2019s pretty amazing.<\/p>\n I went with the MSI Aegis R2 AI (model B2NVV9-1411US), which is a pre-built. I figured I was paying a convenience premium for that, and I\u2019d made peace with it. I thought about building a computer myself, but AI convinced me that it was not going to be a fun project to learn. In fact, it would have probably taken me many months to get the best deals on components.<\/p>\n The important parts:<\/p>\n Their main compromise is the 16GB of VRAM with the card. The big 20-to-30 billion parameter models don\u2019t fit in 16GB. They spill over into system RAM, which is why the 64GB matters. This makes it slower. The RTX 5090 has 32GB and could handle those models. The street price of the RTX 5080 card that I got alone is between $ 1,300 and $ 1,400. The RTX 5090 is around $4,500. The price of the final computer would probably be an extra $3,000 \u2013 no thank you.<\/p>\n As I was waiting for the machine to arrive, I had a thought. This machine is powerful. Powerful computing is in demand. It\u2019s not a big moat, but not everyone has the equipment or the desire to do AI stuff.<\/p>\n I went to do some research with ChatGPT. I thought about being able to automate Fiverr. It turns out that most people on Fiverr want human work \u2013 booooo! AI suggested that I use it to make this blog better. That\u2019s reasonable, except that AI rubbed out the last ember of money in blogging.<\/p>\n Finally, I saw what seemed to be ideal. When the machine is ideal, I could rent the GPU out on a distributed compute network like Salad or GamerHash and collect passive income. It\u2019s a Lazy Man\u2019s dream!<\/p>\n However, I\u2019ve written about enough passive income claims to not get my hopes up too much.<\/p>\n Salad currently pays somewhere around $1.12 a day for an RTX 5080. The card pulls about 360 watts under load, which is roughly 8.6 kilowatt-hours over a full day. At 15 cents a kilowatt-hour, you\u2019re spending about $1.30 in electricity to earn $1.12. While solar power almost makes our electricity free, if we use more than we produce, we have to pay the rates in RI. Last I checked, they were around $0.26 kWh, so even worse.<\/p>\n It said that Vast.ai and RunPod pay more, but the numbers assume your machine actually gets rented. New hosts also start at the bottom of the reputation ranking. It doesn\u2019t seem like it would pay off, but I might give it a try.<\/p>\n No matter what I looked at, it seemed that starting a company was the way to go. I wanted to avoid that, because there\u2019s always a lot of other work with starting a company. Often, there\u2019s no payoff at all. (Kid Wealth, I\u2019m look at you!<\/a>)<\/p>\n I was curious how much the computer would cost if I did buy each component separately. Here\u2019s what AI came up with for the lowest prices:<\/p>\n Add up the absolute cheapest version of every line, and you land around $3,158<\/b>. That\u2019s before a case.<\/p>\n Originally I bought it for $2750<\/b> on Amazon<\/a>. That\u2019s an affiliate link, and they are currently out of stock. If you go there, you\u2019ll see the catch: it is \u201cRenewed.\u201d That may be a deal-breaker, but I\u2019ve bought a lot of renewed stuff on Amazon and never had a problem. It was sold by Woot, but the warranty checked out. Woot is an Amazon company, so there was significant overlap.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll notice I said \u201coriginally\u201d above. My final price was $2,375.<\/b> Two days after I bought it, but before it shipped, Woot put the EXACT same machine on sale on its website. I was able to cancel the Amazon order and wait a week for the Woot one. When it arrived, the box wasn\u2019t in perfect condition, but that\u2019s the only flaw I can see.<\/p>\nWhat I Actually Wanted It To Do<\/h2>\n
The Machine<\/h2>\n
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Can I Make Money with this Machine?<\/h2>\n
The Cost per Component<\/h2>\n
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