I've watched various people do it since I'm interested in doing it myself. The simplest option would be to get an mac studio with 512gb of ram. It's going to run you about $10k, and with the m4 pro (or max) chip and unified memory it'll do most models fine. You can also cut down on the ram for a much cheaper version, but then you'll be stuck with dumber models.
That being said, dropping $10k on something is quite the investment.
Yes and no. 512 gb of memory is not worth $8000, but that's basically the premium you pay with apple. You can technically bypass this and save a few thousand, but then you fall backwards in performance and it gets way more technical (buying 3-4 year old servers online). And you can't technically upgrade macs, but there are places online that you can send them into and have them swap some things for you (it requires soldering).
I personally haven't looked into it, but there might be a chance you can buy the cheapest version of that mac, and then send it in and have the ram/storage maxed out for a lot cheaper than what apple charges.
I've watched various people do it since I'm interested in doing it myself. The simplest option would be to get an mac studio with 512gb of ram. It's going to run you about $10k, and with the m4 pro (or max) chip and unified memory it'll do most models fine. You can also cut down on the ram for a much cheaper version, but then you'll be stuck with dumber models.
That being said, dropping $10k on something is quite the investment.
I’ve heard good things about the mac with unified memory running large language models.
But does mac still rape you over a barrel if you pay for adding extra memory?
edit: is there a way to add extra memory yourself?
Yes and no. 512 gb of memory is not worth $8000, but that's basically the premium you pay with apple. You can technically bypass this and save a few thousand, but then you fall backwards in performance and it gets way more technical (buying 3-4 year old servers online). And you can't technically upgrade macs, but there are places online that you can send them into and have them swap some things for you (it requires soldering).
I personally haven't looked into it, but there might be a chance you can buy the cheapest version of that mac, and then send it in and have the ram/storage maxed out for a lot cheaper than what apple charges.