TCO Economics Analysis
Own Your GPU Shield Logo
OWN YOUR GPU DGX Spark Lease-to-Own
Total Cost of Ownership Comparison

Stop Burning Cash on Cloud GPU Rent.
Build Balance Sheet Equity Instead.

Hyperscale clouds like AWS and traditional bare-metal hosts like BitRefinery Compute charge thousands in perpetual rental fees with zero hardware equity. At month 24, our customers own the physical enterprise NVIDIA Blackwell DGX cluster outright for a nominal $1 buyout.

100% Equity Build Toward Title
$0 Data Egress Fees
Nominal $1 Buyout Option
Tier-3 Burbank–LA Colocation Included
Cloud Rental Trap

100% Sunk OpEx Burn

Renting 1–8 GPUs on AWS EC2 or cloud providers costs $1,300 to $4,500+/mo per node. Over 24 months, you pay $31,000–$100,000+ per node and walk away with $0 in retained assets.

Traditional Colo / BYOGPU

Huge Upfront CapEx Drain

Providers like BitRefinery offer $600/mo BYOGPU colocation, but require you to spend $5,000 to $350,000+ upfront in cash to buy hardware first. Their standard servers are CPU-only with zero GPU acceleration.

The Own Your GPU Advantage

Zero CapEx + 100% Equity

Deploy dedicated NVIDIA DGX Spark nodes in Burbank for ~$295/mo. Every payment amortizes equipment cost. At month 24, you own the supercomputer outright for $1. Net effective cost: ~$99/mo.

Feature-By-Feature Matrix

Direct Economic & Architectural Comparison

Comparing 24-month total cost of ownership across infrastructure models.

Basis: Single NVIDIA DGX Spark (GB10 / 128GB HBM) or equivalent GPU instance
Scroll horizontally to view all hosting models →
Comparison Metric Own Your GPU (Lease-to-Own) BitRefinery Compute / BYOGPU AWS EC2 (P5 / G6e) Specialized AI Clouds (Lambda / CoreWeave)
Hardware Equity Accrual
Does your monthly bill build asset value?
✓ 100% Equity Build
Builds credit toward full title transfer
0% on servers
Or must buy 100% upfront for BYOGPU
0% Equity
100% sunk cost opex burn
0% Equity
Pure hourly or monthly rental
Month 24 Ownership
Who holds legal title to the hardware?
✓ You Own It Outright
Nominal $1 buyout title transfer
BitRefinery owns servers
Zero residual value to customer
Amazon owns everything
Account terminated upon stop
Provider owns everything
Zero residual value
Month 25+ Ongoing Cost
Monthly expense once hardware is amortized
~$65–$95 / mo per node
Hardware drops to $0 (power/colo only)
$500–$4,000 / mo
Rental never stops or drops
$1,314–$4,500+ / mo
Full retail rates forever
$1,800–$3,500 / mo
Perpetual rental bills
Upfront Capital Expenditure
Cash required on Day 1 to deploy
$0 Upfront CapEx
First month lease + refundable deposit
$0 on CPU / $5k–$350k+ on BYOGPU
Must purchase GPUs yourself
$0 (or upfront reserve fees)
All-upfront reserved instances require tens of thousands
$0
Credit card on file
Data Egress Fees
Cost to download models & checkpoints
$0 Egress (Included)
Dedicated unmetered 1 Gbps / 10 Gbps transit
$0 Egress (Included)
1 Gbps included on dedicated servers
$0.05–$0.09 / GB
Moving 100TB = $9,000+ egress bill
$0 – $0.02 / GB
Varies by provider and tier
Hardware Acceleration
Processor & memory architecture
NVIDIA Blackwell GB10
~1 PFLOP FP4, 128GB Unified HBM
CPU Only (Xeon/EPYC)
Zero GPU on standard compute tiers
Virtual GPU Slices
Hypervisor overhead & contention
Various (H100/A100)
Multi-tenant clusters with noisy neighbors
Balance Sheet & Tax Treatment
Financial accounting advantage
Section 179 + Capitalized Asset
Converts rental into balance sheet value
Operating Expense Only
Zero capital asset creation
Operating Expense Only
Zero capital asset creation
Operating Expense Only
Zero capital asset creation
Cumulative 24-Mo Spend
Gross cash outlay over 2 years
~$7,080
Includes $4,699 retained asset
$12,000–$67,200
$0 retained equity
$31,536–$100,000+
$0 retained equity
$43,800–$78,000
$0 retained equity
Interactive Financial Modeler

Compare Your Cumulative Deployment Savings

Select your cluster scale and lease duration to calculate your total cash savings, accumulated hardware asset equity, and post-term monthly run rate.

2 Nodes (256GB HBM)
1 Node 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Nodes
Estimated 24-Mo Cash Savings 77% Less Than Cloud
Total Economic Advantage (Cash Savings + Asset Equity):
$49,072
Net financial advantage over a 24-month deployment period.
Total Alternative Provider Spend: $63,072
Total Own Your GPU Lease Payments: $14,160
Hardware Asset Value You Own: +$9,398 (Owned Outright)
Post-Term Monthly Run Rate: ~$150/mo (Colo only vs $2,628/mo)
Provider Teardown

Why Traditional Hosting & Clouds Fall Short

A granular look at the trade-offs of existing hosting options versus our purpose-built GPU lease-to-own model.

bitrefinery.com/compute CPU Hosting Focus

BitRefinery Dedicated Compute

BitRefinery offers enterprise bare-metal servers from Bronze ($500/mo) to Platinum ($4,000/mo) with $0 egress and 99.99% uptime. However:

  • Zero GPU Acceleration: BitRefinery dedicated servers are CPU-only (Intel Xeon/AMD EPYC). They cannot run 70B+ LLM training or high-throughput AI inferencing without external acceleration.
  • BYOGPU Requires Huge Upfront Cash: Their "BYOGPU" colocation starts at $600/mo, but requires you to spend tens to hundreds of thousands buying physical GPUs upfront.
  • Zero Residual Equity: Monthly server rent is 100% consumed. When your contract ends, you leave empty-handed.
Own Your GPU bundles Blackwell GPUs into the monthly fee and hands you title ownership at month 24.
AWS EC2 (P5 / G6e) Hyper-Expensive Sunk Cost

Hyperscale Cloud Rental

AWS, Azure, and GCP are designed for short-term bursting, making them financially punitive for persistent training or production inference:

  • Exorbitant Run Rates: An 8x H100 node on AWS (p5.48xlarge) costs ~$71,773/month on-demand. Even with 3-year commitments, it runs ~$32,000/month.
  • Egress Taxes: AWS charges $0.05–$0.09/GB for data out. Moving weights and datasets across regions adds thousands to your monthly invoice.
  • Virtualization Overhead: You run inside a virtualized hypervisor alongside noisy neighbors with throttling and unpredictable GPU clock jitter.
Own Your GPU provides dedicated bare metal with $0 egress and 60-80% lower cost.
Lambda / CoreWeave Hourly AI Clouds

Specialized AI Cloud Rentals

Niche cloud providers offer competitive hourly pricing for quick fine-tuning runs, but compound into enormous operational costs over months:

  • No Equity Accrual: Even on multi-year reserved contracts, you are purely renting rack space and silicon from another entity.
  • Capacity Volatility: Reserved nodes often require multi-month prepayments with strict cancellation penalties or spot preemption risks.
  • No Physical Asset Security: When your company seeks enterprise financing or M&A valuation, cloud rental receipts count for $0 in balance sheet assets.
Our hardware leases create tangible, capitalized assets that strengthen your company balance sheet.
Mathematical Case Study

The 24-Month Economic Reality

Let’s run the exact numbers for an AI team deploying 2 dedicated nodes (2x NVIDIA DGX Spark GB10 clusters, 256GB Unified HBM) over 24 months:

Scenario A: Cloud GPU Rental (AWS / CoreWeave) 2 Nodes × 24 Months
Monthly Cloud Rental (2 Nodes): ~$2,628 / mo
Estimated 24-Month Egress Fees: ~$4,800
Total Cash Outlay (24 Months): $67,872
Hardware Asset Value at Month 24: $0.00
Net 24-Month Sunk Cost: $67,872 (100% Burn)

At month 25, if you stop paying, your access is cut instantly. If you continue, you keep paying $2,628/month forever.

Scenario B: Own Your GPU (Lease-to-Own) 2 Nodes × 24 Months
Monthly Lease-to-Own (2 Nodes): ~$590 / mo
Estimated 24-Month Egress Fees: $0 (Included)
Total Cash Outlay (24 Months): $14,160
Hardware Asset Owned at Month 24: +$9,398 (Title Transferred)
Net 24-Month True Cost: $4,762 (~$99/mo per node)

At month 25, you own both physical DGX Spark nodes. Your monthly bill drops to pure Burbank colocation power (~$150/mo total), saving over $2,400/mo indefinitely!

Corporate Tax Advantages: Section 179 & Bonus Depreciation

In addition to saving direct cash outlay, equipment lease-to-own agreements can provide substantial tax benefits. Under IRS Section 179 and MACRS depreciation rules, businesses can often deduct the full equipment purchase price during the tax year of acquisition or amortize lease payments as operating business expenses. Consult your CPA to optimize tax deduction timing.

Burbank–LA Metro Deployment Pipeline Open

Ready to Build Real GPU Equity?

Register your hardware intent today. Zero deposit required to join the priority allocation queue for NVIDIA DGX Spark nodes in Burbank.