> 8 of those instances is equivalent to an 8 core (16 thread) chip with 64GB of memory. Using, e.g., Supermicro AMD EPYC 3251 + parts, you could build an entire

> 8 of those instances is equivalent to an 8 core (16 thread) chip with 64GB of memory. Using, e.g., Supermicro AMD EPYC 3251 + parts, you could build an entire server for less than 1/2 that price. Your choice of comparisons suggest you completely missed the whole point. If the author wanted a desktop I'm sure he would buy one for 600$ instead of spending that money to put together an underperforming cluster that's entirely unusable as a desktop. If instead you are interested in gaining experience managing a cluster that runs distributed systems then yes you would do something like putting together a raspberry pi cluster. Yet, if you seek to have the same experience (or arguably far better) without spendig a hefty sum as capex and having access to more computational resources for a negligible opex then cloud providers such as Hetzner are clearly a far better option.