Best local LLM hardware under $2000
The whole rig under $2000, not just the card. These are the machines that fit a student budget and still run a 125B-class model.
| # | Hardware | VRAM | Read tok/s | Power | Full rig | Cost/M tok | Payback |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT 16GB | 16 GB | 466 | 450 W | $1,669 | $0.118 | 994 days |
| 2 | 2x RTX 3060 12 GB | 24 GB | 1,240 | 490 W | $1,814 | $0.101 | 738 days |
| 3 | AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX | 24 GB | 1,459 | 475 W | $2,000 | $0.063 | 390 days |
| 4 | AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB | 16 GB | 1,652 | 454 W | $2,000 | $0.076 | 514 days |
What these lists do not cover
- Rig prices are dated street prices. Used cards and prebuilt sales move faster than this table, so check the price before buying.
- All figures are single-stream measurements on one workload. Multi-user serving, fine-tuning and server parts behave differently.