For sure. Consumer GPU prices have fallen dramatically but they're still competitive enough; meanwhile last-gen (or later) no-output GPUs with passive cooling and single 8-pin CPU-type connectors are insanely cheap. P40s are readily available for $190, less if you lowball eBay or Facebook sellers at volume discounts.
You can even find some weird retired Cirrascale servers on eBay that provide 8 high-speed PCIe lanes through risers with Tesla-specific connectors on a motherboard with tons of RAM (and a terrible CPU) and multiple PSUs for fractions of their release cost.
It's a great time to be buying 3-5 year old ML equipment for small businesses and hobbyists. I wonder if the prices will ever go up? Not that I'm interested in speculating, but it's a small slice of the market that I'm participating in... though maybe in a year it won't be. I imagine a lot of small businesses will bring ML/DL stuff internal for at least development/testing.
Old enterprise hardware has been a pretty good value for a long time. The target audience for the hardware doesn't tend to buy surplus/used and joe-average doesn't want a 5kw consuming rackmount windtunnel.
You can even find some weird retired Cirrascale servers on eBay that provide 8 high-speed PCIe lanes through risers with Tesla-specific connectors on a motherboard with tons of RAM (and a terrible CPU) and multiple PSUs for fractions of their release cost.
It's a great time to be buying 3-5 year old ML equipment for small businesses and hobbyists. I wonder if the prices will ever go up? Not that I'm interested in speculating, but it's a small slice of the market that I'm participating in... though maybe in a year it won't be. I imagine a lot of small businesses will bring ML/DL stuff internal for at least development/testing.