How to use GPUs over multiple computers for local AI? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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The problem is simple: consumer motherboards don't have that many PCIe slots, and consumer CPUs don't have enough lanes to run 3+ GPUs at full PCIe gen 3 or gen 4 speeds.

My idea was to buy 3-4 computers for cheap, slot a GPU into each of them and use 4 of them in tandem. I imagine this will require some sort of agent running on each node which will be connected through a 10Gbe network. I can get a 10Gbe network running for this project.

Does Ollama or any other local AI project support this? Getting a server motherboard with CPU is going to get expensive very quickly, but this would be a great alternative.

Thanks

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[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I assume you're talking about a CUDA implementation here. There's ways to do this with that system, and even sub-projects that expand on that. I'm mostly pointing how pointless it is for you to do this. What a waste of time and money.

Edit: others are also pointing this out, but I'm still being downvoted. Mkay.

[-] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

Used 3090s go for $800. I was planning to wait for the ARC B580s to go down in price to buy a few. The reason for the networked setup is because I didn't find there to be enough PCIe lanes in any of the used computers I was looking at. If there's either an affordable card with good performance and 48GB of VRAM, or there's an affordable motherboard + CPU combo with a lot of PCIe lanes under $200, then I'll gladly drop the idea of the distributed AI. I just need lots of VRAM and this is the only way I could think of.

Thanks

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

PLEASE look back at the crypto mining rush of a decade ago. I implore you.

You're buying into something that doesn't exist.

this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025

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