A B300 server is 8 GPUs, and that is the unit the market quotes, ships and racks, so every figure below is per node on that basis.
What renting costs
A 3-year term is 26,280 hours. At $4.00 per GPU-hour that is $105,120 per GPU and $840,960 for one 8-GPU node, with $252,288 payable up front at 30% down. Market rates currently run about $3.75 to $4.50 per GPU-hour depending on scale, term, prepayment and how badly an operator needs an anchor tenant, so the same node lands somewhere between $788,400 and $946,080. Power, cooling, space and the fabric are inside that number.
What owning costs, honestly
The hardware is the easy part: a new B300 HGX node lists at $563,000 on our live inventory today. The rest is what most rent-versus-buy comparisons quietly skip.
An 8-GPU B300 node draws roughly 14 kW all in, once CPUs, memory and fans are counted. North American wholesale colocation averaged about $196 per kW per month in the second half of 2025, which puts that node at $2,744 a month, or $98,784 across the 3 years. Then the fabric: a node needs transceivers at both ends of every link, and 800G class optics run around $1,000 each, so budget roughly $16,000 per node for optics and its share of switching.
The comparison, with nothing hidden
| One 8-GPU B300 node, 3 years, US | Rent at $4.00/GPU-hr | Own it |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | Included | $563,000 |
| Colocation and power, 14 kW at $196/kW/mo | Included | $98,784 |
| Optics and fabric share | Included | $16,000 |
| Total over 3 years | $840,960 | $677,784 |
| Payable up front | $252,288 | $563,000 |
| Asset at the end | None | The hardware |
$677,784 to own, operate and cable one node for 3 years, against $840,960 to rent it. Owning is $163,176 cheaper, about 19% of the rental, and at the end you still hold the hardware.
Where the answer flips
Three places, and they are not close calls.
Utilisation, first. Every figure above assumes the cluster runs. Purchase cost is fixed whatever you do; rental scales with hours. At 40% utilisation the rented node costs a fraction of $840,960 while the owned one still costs $677,784, and renting wins comfortably.
Geography, second. The $196 per kW figure is a North American average. Singapore runs roughly $330 to $475 per kW per month, and at $400 the same node costs $780,600 to own, cutting the advantage to $60,360. The breakeven is about $520 per kW per month: above that, renting is simply cheaper.
Capital, third. Renting asks $252,288 up front. Owning asks $563,000 plus a facility contract, and for a lot of teams that is the entire argument regardless of the arithmetic.
The residual nobody prices
At the end of the term the rental leaves you with nothing. The purchase leaves an asset with a real floor. Refurbished H100 nodes list at $240,000 on our own inventory today, years into their life, which is the honest way to sight residual value: look at what the previous generation actually trades for, not at a depreciation schedule.
Three clauses that move the number more than the rate
The utilisation floor, because a committed-spend agreement with a floor above your real usage is a subscription to hours you will not burn. Storage and egress, which arrive on a separate page and routinely add a double-digit percentage. And the exit, because a term you cannot leave is priced by what it costs to stay, and 3 years is 2 generations in this market.
We build this table for buyers on their real utilisation, their target geography and their cost of capital, before anyone signs. The desk is paid from the supply side under disclosed arrangements, so the arithmetic does not bend toward either answer, and you contract directly with the operator or the distributor. Current B300 pricing is on the live inventory, the rental side is the GPUaaS desk, and the space and power side is colocation.