Cost Analysis of my $6.4k Local LLM Server

I haven't seen any of these done, so I just wanted to share my experience in case it is useful for anyone. The purpose of this post is to show total cost of ownership of my local llm server versus API equivalent. Before you look at the final numbers, note that most people do not do proper financial accounting of hardware. Most people treat hardware as a fully depreciated cost, when in fact hardware typically depreciates slowly or in some cases appreciates over time. This significantly changes the TCO results and explains why the number at the bottom is better than what other people mention.