Comment by GTP
Not really in the loop either, but when Deepseek R1 was released, I sumbled upon this YouTube channel [1] that made local AI PC builds in the 1000-2000$ range. But he doesn't always use GPUs, maybe the cheaper builds were CPU plus a lot of RAM, I don't remember.
[1] https://youtube.com/@digitalspaceport?si=NrZL7MNu80vvAshx
Digital Spaceport is a really good channel, I second that - the author is not sparing any detail. The cheaper options always use CPU only, or sharding between different cheap GPUs (without SLI/switching) - which is not good for all use cases (he also highlights this). But some his prices are one-off bargains for used stuff. And RAM prices doubled this year, so you won't buy 2x256 GB DDR4 for $336, no matter what: https://digitalspaceport.com/500-deepseek-r1-671b-local-ai-s...