Bosgame M5 (Strix Halo) w/ 128 GB still goes for $2800 right now. SH systems have surged in price dramatically but quite unevenly.

>The best option is likely to rent hardware on Runpod.

Vast.ai is much cheaper, but the broader point here is contestable. The only dimension in which cloud GPU rentals win is cost. You lose the confidentiality, integrity, and availability benefits of local deployments.

Rentals are priced to pay themselves off in 1-1.5 years (when renting them out per hour, not selling tokens). Its never a better option to rent.

Not that I'd encourage anyone to throw large amounts of money to have access to LLMs, but you're definately going to be better off buying something that you can amortize over multiple years with a multi year warranty.