Professional Hardware, Built Around the Workload
Gaming PCs are something Alden Tech builds. High-performance custom computing is what Alden Tech does — for businesses, creators, engineers, and organizations that need a machine matched to real work, not a spec sheet.
Local AI Workstations — Alden Tech Specialty
Alden Private AI gives your business its own secure AI assistant that runs locally on hardware you control. Instead of sending company information to a public AI service, your employees can use AI inside your own environment for everyday work like writing emails, summarizing documents, finding information, answering questions about company procedures, and working with internal files. There are no per-user AI subscriptions to manage, and the system is tailored around the way your business actually works.
We take proven hardware and inference software and turn it into a working, supported system — sized, installed, and tuned for what you're actually going to do with it: the hardware, the AI software, setup, testing, document integration, employee access, and ongoing support. We're not the ones who built the underlying AI models; we're the ones who make them run reliably on hardware you own.
Local First, Cloud Optional. Every system ships configured to run inference entirely on hardware you own, with nothing sent off-site by default. LM Studio, Ollama, llama.cpp, and Open WebUI can all technically be pointed at a cloud model if you ever want that — that's a setting you'd choose to change, not something we do for you. Running locally keeps everything on hardware you control; that's a starting point, not a guarantee — security still depends on how the system is configured and maintained.
Is local AI cheaper than cloud AI? Not always, and we won't pretend otherwise — see the real numbers below.
What Can Private AI Actually Do?
A private AI system can help employees with many of the same everyday tasks they may already use online AI tools for. For example, employees can:
- Draft and rewrite emails
- Summarize long documents
- Ask questions about company policies and procedures
- Search manuals, SOPs, work instructions, and other internal documents
- Turn notes into professional documents
- Compare information across multiple files
- Create first drafts of reports
- Explain technical information in simpler language
- Search a private company knowledge base using normal questions
- Help organize and classify internal information
A company could ask: "What is our procedure for handling a damaged shipment?" Instead of searching through folders and PDFs, the AI can locate the relevant information and provide an answer based on the company's own documents — and show where the information came from, so employees can verify the answer.
Local AI vs. ChatGPT: What It Actually Costs
We're not going to tell you a local system is the cheaper option for one or two people doing everyday chatbot tasks — for that, it usually isn't. The honest question isn't "is this cheaper than ChatGPT," it's: do you want your company's information processed by an outside AI service, or do you want an AI system your business owns? That's a different purchase.
| Solution | 1 user/yr | 2 users/yr | 3 users/yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Plus (individual) | $240 | $480* | $720* |
| ChatGPT Business Standard (annual) | —† | $480 | $720 |
| ChatGPT Business Premium (annual) | —† | $2,400 | $3,600 |
| Alden Local AI — electricity | ~$60–120 | ~$60–120 | ~$60–120 |
| Alden Local AI — hardware | from $2,799 one-time, any number of users on that machine | ||
*Separate individual Plus accounts, not a managed Business workspace. †ChatGPT Business has a two-seat minimum. Electricity estimate assumes roughly 2–8 hours/day of active inference at typical Ryzen AI Max+ 395 power draw on South Carolina residential rates; heavier, closer-to-24/7 use runs higher, around $15/month.
For 1–3 ordinary users, ChatGPT wins on raw dollars — OpenAI is subsidizing enormous shared infrastructure across millions of users, and a $20–25/month seat is genuinely hard to beat on price alone at that scale. Past 3 users, or with heavy usage, the math flips fast: adding a 4th person to a local system costs roughly $0 hardware plus a little more electricity, while cloud seats keep adding $20–$125/month each, forever. Against ChatGPT Business Premium specifically, a local system can break even in as little as 12–18 months for 2–3 heavy users.
| ChatGPT Business | Alden Private AI |
|---|---|
| Subscription | Customer owns hardware |
| Cloud inference | On-premises inference |
| Requires internet | Can function without internet |
| Vendor-hosted models | Customer controls models |
| Per-user pricing | No per-user AI licensing fee |
| Usage limits apply | Use it as much as the hardware allows |
| Documents processed in the cloud | Documents can remain on-premises |
| Excellent frontier-model capability | Typically weaker models, but private |
That last row deserves to be said plainly: a quantized local model on this hardware is not a frontier-scale cloud model. That's not the pitch. The pitch is that this machine gives your business its own private AI system — one your company owns, on your terms.
Turnkey — What's Included
- Workstation sizing & GPU selection for the models you'll run
- Local inference software, installed and configured
- Private RAG / internal document & knowledge search
- A web-based AI interface your team actually uses
- Performance tuning, testing & validation
- Deployment help, ongoing support & upgrades
AI Workstations
- AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Local AI Workstation, 128GB — 96GB VRAM | Alden Tech — 96GB VRAM — AMD Radeon 8060S Graphics — $3,799
- AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 Local AI Workstation, 64GB — 48GB VRAM | Alden Tech — 48GB VRAM — AMD Radeon 8060S Graphics — $2,799
Creator Workstations
Built around your workflow, not a gaming benchmark. CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, scratch disks, cooling, and connectivity are all selected around your actual pipeline — video editing (Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve), photography (Photoshop, Lightroom), streaming, music production, and 3D modeling/rendering (Blender).
Engineering & Professional Workstations
Reliability first, for work that can't afford downtime — CAD (SolidWorks, AutoCAD), architecture and simulation, 3D visualization, software development, and data analysis get appropriate hardware selection, real expandability, memory capacity, storage performance, GPU headroom, and stability testing before delivery. We don't make unverified certification claims for professional software or hardware.
Configure a Professional Workstation
Business PCs
Better-built than a disposable retail desktop. Standard, replaceable components; upgradeable and repairable; hardware sized to the workload; clean Windows installs; business-class configuration; local support; no unnecessary consumer bloatware.
We ask before we spec — for every category. No predetermined configurations.
Alden Tech — veteran-owned custom PC builder in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Call or text (864) 381-8201, or contact us.