Don't buy equipment before you have demonstrated a real need for it.

This applies across basically all of life, and it's so frustrating to see people ignoring it, because what ends up happening is they use a string of 'gonnas' to justify buying stuff they don't need. Gonna get fit - buy $1500 worth of gym gear. Gonna learn electronics - buy oscilloscope, power supplies, tons of components. Gonna get your motorcycle license - buy brand new bike and stick it in the garage.

If you have a desktop computer, you're good to start. When you've done enough that your available CPU/GPU is limiting you on your own projects (not on something you pulled off github) then you can look at upgrading.

/rant

>Gonna learn electronics - buy oscilloscope

A fairly accomplished electronic engineer told me that they'd never once solved a problem using an oscilloscope, but that it helped to keep them occupied while they were mulling over what might have gone wrong. (That's presumably why the better ones have so many knobs and dials to play with, like one of those children's toys.)

I've certainly solved problems with a storage scope before, but not for a long time, and they were mostly software problems rather than hardware problems (ie. using it as a poor man's logic analyzer to infer what's going on with the code via a couple of spare IO pins). I really kinda want one though.

There is actually an accepted term for what you describe in many circles, called GAS -- Gear Acquisition Syndrome.

One forum user put together a <$700 complete PC with an adequate GPU. You definitely don't need >1 GPU.

Or you can use spot instances, as a sibling comment mentions - about $0.20/hour generally.

Ah, cool. I am familiar with AWS and spot instances, but after that comment was assuming it required multiple instances for training or something.

Build a fast deep learning machine for under $1K https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13605222 a month ago with many tweaks recommended in the comments.

gcp: Contrary to the claims there, the CPU does matter

dsacco: yes, this will work, it will quickly become suboptimal [...] as you scale your hobby into something resembling more professional work

brudgers: I'd start with a used Dell Precision T7xxx series off of Ebay for a <$300 including RAM and a Xeon or two.

croon: If the limit is a firm $1000, I would get something like this: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XHV9Fd