Running the actual break-even math on buying vs renting an H200: 60% utilization over 2 years wins
recentheartbroken · reddit · 2026-09-26
The author ran the real rent-vs-buy numbers for an H200 box and got counterintuitive results.
Baseline figures
- An 8-GPU HGX H200 server costs roughly $320k–420k; $370k is a reasonable midpoint
- Median on-demand H200 price across 34 providers is about $4.40/GPU-hour as of Sept 18 ($2–3 is spot pricing), i.e. $35.20/hour equivalent
Hardware-only break-even
- 14.4 months at 100% utilization
- 24 months at 60%
- 36 months at 40%
Four uncounted costs: power and cooling (colo cage quote exceeded budget), depreciation (thin resale on last-gen parts — halve any assumption), your own time, idle hours.
Conclusion: owning wins at 60% sustained utilization over two years; below 40%, rent. Idle capacity can be sold to offtake networks to offset costs.
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