A few months ago there was a post on HN about catching up to the current state of LLM dev and learning how to use it. In it there were recommendations for hardware - the lowest tier being a 3090/4090. When looking at the decision tree for even cheaper options, it basically said to find another hobby.
Not sure if that's changed but ever since seeing that line, I've been put off of that world. I still occasionally click on HN links advertising new methods which can be run on "consumer" cards and every time it's just a 3090/4090...
I don't have that much money.