Is a high-end private local LLM setup worth it?

Hello, I’ve been scrolling through a lot of posts, reading personal experiences, setup advice, and replies to beginner questions from people like me. LLMs really seem like a revolution. But at the same time in every post there is issues : they’re expensive; even if you’re willing to spend serious money, they still seem hard to set up properly; and in the end, even very expensive local setups still don’t seem to match the latest Claude or GPT versions, especially in terms of speed and token throughput. ***So, is it worth doing?*** I know it sounds like a broad question, but I do have enough money to seriously consider it. A setup like 5×3090s (i’m starting chill with 64GB, 3090 + 3060) with 128+ GB of DDR5 seems realistic for me. But even with proper preparation, *can I actually get an experience that matches* Claude Pro Max x20 or GPT Pro in terms of speed, intelligence, and general smoothness? The reason I want to do it is simple: I **genuinely hate** the idea that my friends and I are basically dumping our whole lives into some 200 IQ fed hoe and paying them to monitor us. So I’d rather use a private, offline model.