Reddit user turns $35 mining rig into local AI server
The nine Nvidia P106-100 cards in the garage-sale rig total 54GB of VRAM and ran a 35B model at over 30 tokens per second.
A Reddit user bought a nine-GPU cryptocurrency mining rig found in a garage for a negotiated 3,000 rubles, about $35, and got it running local AI inference, according to tomshardware.com.
The rig was listed on the Russian classifieds site Avito. The seller refused a pre-purchase test, and the buyer negotiated the price down without one. All nine Nvidia P106-100 GPUs worked on the first try, totaling 54GB of VRAM.
The buyer ran the 35-billion-parameter model Qwen3.6-35B-A3B locally in Ollama at over 30 tokens per second. The P106-100 cards each have 6GB of GDDR5 and were originally introduced around mid-2017.
The setup's main system uses a weak Celeron CPU with very little system memory. The buyer plans to move the hardware to a case supporting up to an i7-7700K CPU and 32GB of RAM, with room for 12 GPUs.
Long-term support
On its developer blog, Nvidia says CUDA 13.0 removed offline compilation for GPUs below compute capability 7.5, and driver branch 580 is the final branch to support pre-CC 7.5 GPUs. Security updates for Pascal GPUs are supported through October 2028.
Quick answers
What model did the $35 mining rig run?
It ran the 35-billion-parameter model Qwen3.6-35B-A3B locally in Ollama at over 30 tokens per second.
How much VRAM does the rig have?
The nine Nvidia P106-100 GPUs total 54GB of VRAM, with 6GB of GDDR5 per card.
Where was the rig listed?
It was listed on the Russian classifieds site Avito.