Own or rent a refurbished H100

Owning a refurbished H100 and renting a block of H100 capacity are different contracts. One is hardware you take title to. The other is someone else's cluster for a term. BreezeWish lists both, on different markets. This guide is how to sketch a break-even with your own numbers. It does not publish a price, and any dollar figure you plug in has to come from a listing or from the capacity index, not from this page.

What you are comparing

An H100 SXM module is a 80 GB Hopper GPU that NVIDIA rates up to 700 W, normally in an HGX or DGX system [S1]. Buying it means you pay for the module or the board, you arrange power, cooling, and a host, and you keep the hardware after the job. Renting reserved cluster capacity means you pay for GPUs for a term. You do not take the cards home. The capacity market is the cluster-capacity board, not the hardware board [S2].

The hardware price index on an H100 page appears only after five verified completed deals for that model. The capacity price page is a separate series, in dollars per GPU-hour, and it has its own five-deal rule [S3]. If either index is empty, you do not have a BreezeWish number yet. Use a live listing you can actually read, and label anything else as your own estimate.

A break-even you can finish

Write four lines.

1. Purchase. The hardware price you are willing to pay, per GPU, from a listing or from the hardware index if it is published. Add freight and any seller warranty you are buying. This is an estimate until you have a quote.

1. Ownership extras. Power, space, remote hands, and the hours your team will spend when a GPU fails. NVIDIA's 700 W figure is a thermal design power, not your electric bill [S1]. Your site's rate and your cooling overhead are your estimate. Put the word estimate on that line.

1. What you could sell it for later. A guess, labeled estimate, of the hardware's resale after the project. Do not treat today's ask as tomorrow's bid.

1. Rent. The capacity price per GPU-hour from a live capacity listing or from the capacity index when that index is published [S3], times the hours you will actually run. A reserved term you must pay whether or not you run is the term price, not the hours you hoped to use.

Break-even months, as an estimate, are the net purchase (purchase plus ownership extras minus what you think you can sell it for) divided by the rent you avoid each month. If the rent side is a short burst, ownership rarely wins. If the hardware will sit powered for a year, do the division before you decide. Replace every blank with a number you can point at. This page intentionally has none.

What ownership does not include

A used H100 does not include a data-center lease, a support contract, or a promise that the next driver drop will behave. Ask the hardware seller for the form factor, the report, and the warranty. Ask the capacity seller for the term, the GPU count, the region, and what happens if a node fails. Those are different conversations. Do not paste the capacity term into the hardware purchase order.

When rent is the simpler contract

Rent when you need the GPUs for a fixed window, when you do not have power for a 700 W module times eight, or when you do not want title, export, and resale on your books. The capacity market is where those offers live [S2]. You still read the listing. A reserved cluster is not the same SKU as a pile of SXM modules.

When buying is the simpler contract

Buy when you already operate the chassis, when the job will outlast a reasonable rental, or when you want the cards on your own network for reasons a public cluster will not meet. Then use the hardware market, and use the checks before you buy: serials, a seller-provided report, title, and freight. The break-even sketch is only a reason to open the used H100 SXM prices and listings or the capacity board. Read the live offer before you bid.

Export still applies to the hardware

If you buy the cards, you hold them. ECCN 3A090 and US-only buyers on this market still apply [S4]. A capacity contract does not hand you the GPUs, so it does not hand you the same export question. It has its own terms. Consult counsel for either path if the workload or the parties are unclear. This guide is not legal advice.