u/ChiGamerr

I'm looking for a professionally built local-AI workstation and would appreciate opinions before I spend roughly $11,000.

Primary use: running local/open-weight models—especially Qwen-family coding and agent models—plus RAG, document analysis, private business automation, and potentially multiple coding agents. This is a work machine, not primarily a gaming system. Privacy and keeping company data local matter.

The configuration I'm considering from Empowered PC:

- NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell, 48GB

- AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

- ASUS ProArt X870E-Creator WiFi

- 128GB DDR5 5600, specifically 2×64GB

- 4TB Gen4 NVMe

- 1000W 80 Plus Gold PSU

- 360mm AIO

- Windows 11 Pro

- Three-year warranty

- Approximately $10,800

I'm in the Northbrook/Chicagoland area, but I'm fine with a reputable US builder shipping it. I already know Micro Center and CDW and am looking for other options.

Questions:

1. Is this sensibly configured for local Qwen/LLM work, or is the money allocated poorly?

2. Is 48GB VRAM the right target at this budget, or should I be looking at a different GPU arrangement?

3. Does the 9950X3D make sense here, or would another CPU/platform be a better workstation choice?

4. Is AM5 a mistake if I may want more GPU capacity later?

5. Which Qwen/open models and practical context sizes would you expect this machine to handle comfortably?

6. Which US system builder would you trust for a machine at this price, with a real parts-and-labor warranty and competent support?

I know building it myself would be cheaper. The single point of support and warranty are part of what I'm paying for. I'm especially interested in firsthand experiences from people who bought a high-end local-AI workstation and actually had to use the builder's support.

I used a marketplace-provided UPS Ground Saver label for a $68 package. Tracking recorded an “On the Way” scan in Franklin Park, Illinois, then stopped. I no longer have the paper counter receipt, and the marketplace says that without it the package was not proven to have been tendered correctly.

Is an “On the Way” movement scan tied to any retrievable acceptance or origin record that a UPS Store or UPS customer service can provide? Because the marketplace purchased and controls the label, would only that marketplace be able to open the formal claim?

I'm looking for the carrier-process answer, not asking this subreddit to resolve the marketplace dispute. The tracking number and employee names are omitted.

I shipped a $68 custom figure with a marketplace-provided UPS Ground Saver label. UPS tracking showed an “On the Way” movement scan, then stopped. The USPS-linked tracking later showed an unpaid-postage issue.

The marketplace denied its Shipping Protection and told me to contact USPS, even though it purchased and controls the label. I'm trying to understand the postal side rather than blame a USPS employee: when a Ground Saver package reaches USPS with this status, can a local postmaster or Package Research Case locate or return it? Does the label owner need to correct the postage before USPS can release it?

I'm not posting the tracking number. I'd especially appreciate input from anyone who has seen the UPS-to-USPS handoff fail this way.

Mercari sold me its Shipping Protection with a prepaid UPS Ground Saver label for a $68 custom figure. UPS tracking showed an “On the Way” movement scan before the package disappeared.

The first support rep said the review would rely on those tracking updates. A supervisor reversed that position, denied Shipping Protection because I couldn't produce the paper drop-off receipt, and told me to contact USPS myself.

That's the contradiction: Mercari purchased and controls the label, but shifted the recovery work to me after denying the protection advertised with that label. I can contact the carriers for information, but I don't control Mercari's carrier account or claim.

I'm moving the rest of my listings away. eBay has been great in my experience and already gives me roughly five times Mercari's sales volume. This wasn't worth repeating.

I sell across eBay and Mercari, and eBay has honestly been great for me—roughly five times the sales volume I get from Mercari.

The last straw was a $68 custom figure shipped with Mercari's prepaid UPS Ground Saver label. UPS recorded an “On the Way” movement scan, then the package stopped moving. Mercari's first rep said they would rely on the tracking updates. A supervisor then denied Shipping Protection because I no longer had the paper drop-off receipt and told me to contact USPS.

That leaves the seller in a bad position: Mercari purchased and controls the label, while the seller is told to pursue the carrier. I'm not claiming every eBay case is perfect, but in my own business the volume and support path have been far more workable.

For other professional resellers: do you avoid marketplace-supplied labels, or have you found a reliable way to document every handoff without slowing down fulfillment?

UPDATE: The relevant issue is no longer a debate over the drop-off. The package is traceable in the carrier network and may still be delivered. Mercari has stated that it can cancel and refund the buyer, will not hold the cancellation or arrange recovery, and will not compensate me even if the package is ultimately delivered. My complaint is that this process permits a foreseeable item-plus-refund outcome with no seller remedy.

Longtime reseller, mostly eBay and Mercari. I’m looking for actual seller experience here—not asking anyone to contact, report, or brigade Mercari.

I sold a $68 custom figure using Mercari’s prepaid UPS Ground Saver label. UPS tracking showed one “On the Way” event, the USPS-linked number showed an unpaid-postage exception, and then the package went dark.

The support record still troubles me:

- Mercari’s first written response said, “The label shows carrier acceptance...” and said a lost-in-transit review would occur after 30 days without movement.

- A later rep said that without the receipt they would “rely on the tracking updates.”

- A supervisor later treated the USPS status as a wrong-carrier tender and denied Shipping Protection, but also wrote that the buyer could cancel and that I would not be compensated “even if the package is eventually delivered.”

- Support said it could not prevent cancellation, would not arrange a redirect or return, and told me to pursue USPS myself.

I am not asking Reddit to decide a carrier-tender technicality. I am asking how a marketplace can knowingly allow the buyer to receive both the item and a refund while refusing the seller any hold, recovery, or reimbursement path. Mercari’s own Shipping Protection page also says only Mercari may file carrier claims on its prepaid labels.

Has anyone gotten Mercari to hold a cancellation while a traceable package was still moving, arrange recovery, or reimburse a seller after a canceled transaction was ultimately delivered? I’d appreciate specific experience more than general “never use Ground Saver” advice.

The evidence images reproduce verbatim excerpts from the email thread; names, ticket numbers, listing details, and tracking numbers are fully redacted.

https://preview.redd.it/wafpjc2us1fh1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=4df63107c42d007d43012f2f19384e5c4704ea3d

https://preview.redd.it/ihzgsscvs1fh1.png?width=1318&format=png&auto=webp&s=e1d0f6c9e38de506da573d81e6935a5a020c5c28

I’m legitimately asking: Do you think this reset system is better or worse?

With Codex, if your limit gets reset midweek, your next scheduled reset gets pushed out seven days from that point. Anthropic handles it differently: when Claude’s limit is manually reset, you keep your original weekly reset day.

So isn’t Codex essentially moving the finish line, while Claude is giving you more actual usage within the same reset cycle?

I was working on a project for three days in co-work with Fable 5. I had it build the plan. We had our own guard rail set up and the last message I sent didn't go through.

It repeatedly says "edit and try again" but it doesn't actually get sent and when I click "continue with Opus" nothing actually happens. Essentially I lost three days of work because Fable and Anthropic are making up their own safety guardrails because all I'm trying to do is create an API key for my company to use to start automating stuff and for some reason Claude Fable five doesn't like it...

Guess I'll have 5.6 Sol finish the job.

Not to mention is spend 12+ hours doing it wrong at first too.

Happy AI

Please point me in the right direction. Do NOT message me asking for pics. Just please point me to the best places to try and sell off the collections. [Mainly dbz, some star wars and a few others]

I have been thinking a lot about AI from the chronic pain side of life, not the hype side.

I deal with chronic back and neck pain, fibromyalgia, and the aftermath of shoulder surgery. AI has not fixed any of that. It has not replaced doctors, physical therapy, medication, rest, or the boring reality of pacing myself.

But it has helped me carry some of the load.

When you are in pain all the time, even basic thinking can get expensive. Remembering symptoms, describing pain clearly, preparing for appointments, sorting through notes, figuring out what questions to ask, or planning a day around limited energy can feel like another job stacked on top of the pain.

AI helps me put words to things when I am too worn out to explain them well. It can turn scattered thoughts into a cleaner summary. It can help me prepare questions for a doctor instead of realizing afterward that I forgot half of what I wanted to ask. It can help me notice patterns: what flares me up, what helps, what seems connected, and what might be worth bringing up next time.

It also helps with the emotional side in a practical way. Chronic pain can make you feel like you are constantly negotiating with your own body. Having a place to dump the mess, sort it out, and turn it into something usable has been surprisingly valuable.

I am not saying AI is the answer to chronic pain. It is not. But for me, it has become a kind of accessibility tool. It helps with the paperwork of being sick, the planning, the wording, the remembering, and sometimes just the feeling of not having to untangle everything alone.

That may not sound dramatic, but when you are already in pain, anything that saves energy matters.

This is not a benchmark post or a "which model is better" post. It is more personal than that.

I live with chronic back and neck pain, fibromyalgia, and lingering shoulder issues after surgery. When I am in a flare, coding gets hard in ways that are not always obvious from the outside. It is not just "my shoulder hurts." It is typing less, thinking through brain fog, losing context after breaks, and getting stuck because the effort of organizing the work is bigger than the work itself.

Claude Code has been helpful for me because it acts like a second layer of memory and structure. I can brain-dump what I am trying to do, ask it to turn that into steps, have it summarize where we left off, or use it to reduce the amount of repetitive typing and context switching I have to do.

It does not fix the pain. It does not replace judgment. It definitely does not magically make programming effortless.

But it does make the work more accessible on days when my body is not cooperating. That feels like an underrated benefit of these tools: they are not only about speed or output. For some of us, they help keep the door open at all.

Has anyone else here started thinking of Claude Code less as a productivity boost and more as an accessibility tool?

Big fan of Notion but I can't seem to get the MCP server to behave. Constant 404 timeouts in Claude and Codex — fetch, search, update calls all either come back 404 or hang.

Already tried reconnecting on both the client side and Notion side, regenerating the integration, different workspace. Same result.

Anyone figured out a pattern? Hoping it's something dumb on my end and not the endpoint.

"Chaos engineering" as someone described it. If this helps anybody, go for it.

I'm a fast typer but it comes at a cost. Sometimes I end up in pain. Wispr Flow is one of the best products I've ever used. I love it so much. Thank you to everyone involved and I hope you guys continue to use it so this stunt company can stick around for a long time.

Please feel free to post your insights as well.

https://preview.redd.it/eo7cucei742h1.png?width=1331&format=png&auto=webp&s=abf2eef49d88befa61fc1899dfa272cb1f3e9fcd

I have been playing with custom MCPs and finally built one that feels useful in day-to-day life instead of just being a demo.

The annoying part was Microsoft 365 access. I wanted ChatGPT/Codex to do boring useful stuff - read inbox, send a follow-up, check calendar, save notes to OneDrive - but I do not have tenant admin rights or an approved Graph app registration.

The workaround was Power Automate HTTP triggers. Each operation is a tiny PA flow that runs as me, then a small FastMCP server wraps the webhook URLs as tools.

So the rough flow is:

ChatGPT/Codex -> MCP tool -> FastMCP server -> Power Automate webhook -> M365 connector

It is defintely glue code, but useful glue code. Biggest lesson so far: treat the PA webhook URLs like passwords, and check for duplicate URLs. I had two tools pointed at the same flow for a while and thought I was losing my mind.

I'm not pitching a product, just sharing a pattern that helped me get around a very normal M365 automation problem.

Situation:

Constraint	Reality
Tenant admin	Not me
App registration	Not getting approved quickly
Graph permissions	Ticket-shaped black hole
Need	Automate my own mailbox/calendar/files
Available	Power Automate under my user license

The useful bit: Power Automate flows with HTTP triggers.

For each operation, I made a flow:

HTTP POST -> Power Automate -> M365 connector action -> Response

Because the flow runs as my user, it can do things I can already do manually:

Operation	PA action
Send mail	Office 365 Outlook Send Email V2
Reply to mail	Outlook reply action
Read/search mail	Outlook message actions / filters
Calendar read/create/update/delete	Outlook calendar actions
OneDrive read/list/write	OneDrive for Business actions
Excel rows	Excel Online table actions
Word template fill	Word Online template action
Planner task create	Planner connector

I put a small wrapper service in front of the webhook URLs so I can call them consistently from scripts/tools, but that part is optional. The core trick is just using PA as the delegated-permission layer.

Caveats:

• Treat every HTTP trigger URL like a secret. It is basically a bearer token.
• Don't hardcode them in scripts you might commit.
• PA run limits are real, but fine for personal/internal automation.
• Re-saving/copying flows can change URLs.
• Duplicate endpoints in your config will make you question your sanity.

That last one is not hypothetical. I had two operations mapped to the same webhook for a while because I copied a flow and forgot to change the URL. Very professional.

This obviously is not a replacement for a properly governed Graph integration. But for "I need to automate my own stuff and I'm not the tenant admin," it has been way more practical than I expected.

I built a small self-hosted bridge for my Microsoft 365 account and figured it might be useful to people here who like practical glue code.

The short version:

HTTP client / MCP client -> my VPS -> Power Automate webhook -> M365 connector

I wanted a way to automate mail, calendar, OneDrive, Excel, Word templates, and Planner without tenant admin access or a Graph app registration. Power Automate turned out to be the easiest middle layer because the flows run as my user and use my existing permissions.

Each operation is just a PA flow:

• HTTP trigger
• M365 connector action
• Response action returning JSON

Then I have a small Python FastMCP server on a VPS that exposes those as tools and forwards the call to the right PA webhook.

Current tools:

Thing	What it does
Inbox	Read unread mail / search by sender
Mail	Send, schedule, reply by message ID
Calendar	Read date range, create/update/delete events
OneDrive	List folder, read file, create file, overwrite file
Excel	Read/write table rows
Google Sheets	Read/write via the PA connector
Word	Fill a template with token values
Planner	Create tasks

I built it for Claude/Codex via MCP, but the MCP part is optional. You could just call the same PA webhooks from curl or a Python script.

The security model is simple but important:

• webhook URLs are bearer tokens, so keep them secret
• config file is not committed anywhere
• the MCP server only exposes the flows I explicitly map
• I’m not giving a model raw Graph access
• Power Automate run history gives me an audit trail

It’s not elegant, exactly, but it works. And honestly “works” beat elegant pretty hard here.

Main mistake I made: duplicated a flow, forgot to update the URL in my config, and had two tools silently pointing at the same PA endpoint. If you build something like this, add a startup check that warns on duplicate webhook URLs. Ask me how I know.