The Hobbyist Infrastructure Tax That Cloud Vendors Won't Advertise

The thermal problem is the tell. Building a ram-air intake and window vent for a 1,100-watt home AI box ^[10] is not the behavior of someone exploring a technology — it's the behavior of someone who has committed to running it continuously and needs the physical environment to accommodate that commitment. The engineering challenge has moved from 'can I run this model' to 'can I run this model indefinitely without destroying the room.' That transition marks a maturity point in the community that cooling-system posts make visible.