Self-hosted AI: I bought 7 RTX 5090s instead of renting from AWS. Here's the math.
Dev.to AI
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Generative AI
AI Hardware
"You should just use AWS." - every VC I pitched in 2025. I didn't. I bought seven RTX 5090s instead. This post is the math, the tradeoffs, and the reason it makes sense for ZSky AI - a free AI image and video generator I built after a traumatic brain injury took away my ability to visualize. If you're a developer thinking about self-hosting a GPU workload in 2026, here's everything I wish someone had written down for me. Why I couldn't rent Quick backstory because it matters for the architecture: I have aphantasia - no mind's-eye imagery - plus a TBI from a bad accident.