Worth investing in hardware now? If so what?

Reddit r/LocalLLaMA / 4/9/2026

💬 OpinionSignals & Early TrendsTools & Practical UsageIndustry & Market Moves

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Key Points

The author asks whether it is worth investing in new AI hardware now, after returning a Mac Studio M3 Ultra (60 GPU/96GB RAM) due to concerns about limited storage and AI/ML headroom.
They consider GB10 “AI Computers” with higher memory and storage, but worry—based on community reports—that performance may be slower and not justify the cost.
Their goal is to run large local models (around 120B), reduce reliance on paid subscriptions, and be able to support continuous agent workflows and future fine-tuning.
The discussion is framed as a decision problem about hardware sizing (RAM, VRAM, and storage) versus practical throughput and responsiveness for local inference and training-adjacent tasks.
They mention having already spent on a dock for backup storage, keeping it depending on the next hardware choice.

2 weeks ago I bought a Mac Studio M3 Ultra 60 GPU/96GB from Apple. I returned it yesterday because I wasn't sure if I made the right decision, the 1TB storage was already looking quite small and for machine learning it wasn't quite as established as I liked. the 96GB ram also felt like I might have missed out on a "breakpoint" so to speak. I thought the GB10 "AI Computers" with 128Gb Memory and 4TB storage might be better but then I read last night on here that they are a lot slower, and by the time pre-fill is done the Mac would have finished.

So now I'm lost.

I spent £4,199 on the Mac and another £500 on a 10TB dock. Mac is returned but the dock hasn't been taken back yet, I feel like it's a good backup storage (But will return it depending on how the next investment goes.)

I have a Minimax Token Plan and this is my daily runner right now (Yes I know, it's not a local model, shoot me!), I was planning to invest in hardware in the hopes that the new releases like Qwen3.6 and Gemma 4 continue to pave the way for local models and I can ditch the monthly subscriptions.

So help a totally lost ADHD Infused ferret navigate the market right now. I want something I can run say 120B models on and be an investment in the future, potentially start the rabbit while of fine tuning models and still work on 24/7 agent harness/framework.

Advice welcome 😊

submitted by /u/StandardKey7566
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