Colocation for a Small AI Server: What a 1–4 GPU Box Costs to Host (per kW, 2026)

I spent five years building, repairing and selling PCs at Aliteq's shop in Kathmandu, from 2019 to 2024. Aliteq is now a US-based company and I build AI apps. I have never colocated a server myself, so everything below comes from providers' own price pages, read on 27 September 2026, plus our own GPU price tracker. What the shop years did teach me is how much heat and noise a multi-GPU box puts out, and that is usually why a company starts asking about colocation.

This piece picks up where cloud GPU vs your own AI server leaves off. That article decides whether to own at all. This one assumes you own the box, or are about to, and asks where it should live.

What colocating a 1–4 GPU box costs a month

In the US, the cheapest plan with a published price and enough power for a one, two or four card box is a $429 Dallas half rack. A four-card box with 600 W GPUs needs more, and FDC Servers' $999 plan with 4 kW included fits it. In the UK, per-amp pricing puts a 4U box at about $232 to $828 a month.

The US column is flat for a reason. Tier.Net's Dallas half rack costs $429 a month with 10 amps at 208 volts, 30 TB of traffic and no setup fee. That's 2.08 kW on paper and about 1.66 kW you can use continuously, which covers everything up to a four-card RTX PRO 6000 Max-Q box. Nothing cheaper with a printed price has enough power.

The UK and German columns work differently, and they suit a box that isn't busy all day:

• Per amp (UK). VeloxServ's 4U plan is £75 a month with 1 amp included. Its own pricing calculator adds £50 a month for each extra amp. At the UK's 230 volts, which is my assumption since the page doesn't say, that's about $288 per kW a month.
• Metered (UK, Germany). HA Hosting in Sheffield charges £52.50 a month with 84 kWh included, then £0.40 per kWh. CloudKleyer in Frankfurt charges €220 a month for 4U plus €0.32 per kWh. The Frankfurt figures in the chart assume the box runs at load 24/7; a box that idles at night pays less.

Two of Europe's best-known budget options are closed to new customers. Hetzner's page says "we are unable to provide data center space for colocation until further notice", and HOSTKEY's Amsterdam colocation says it is "temporarily unavailable for new customers".

Why the $50 colo deals don't work for a GPU server

Single-server deals include 0.1 to 0.4 kW, and a GPU box needs 0.55 kW or more at peak. Tier.Net's $50 to $85.25 1U plans come with 1 amp at 208 volts, about 0.21 kW. Colocation America's single-server plan starts at $75 with 2 to 3 amps at 120 volts. HA Hosting's 84 kWh a month averages about 0.12 kW.

Here is how I sized each box. NVIDIA lists the RTX 5090 at 575 W total graphics power and 1,000 W required system power, the RTX PRO 6000 Workstation Edition at 600 W and the Max-Q at 300 W. I add 250 W for the CPU, board, memory, fans and power-supply losses:

Some plans look close but don't say enough. WebNX sells a 4U slot for $129 a month on a "208V / 20A shared (metered)" circuit without saying how much of it is yours. Sharktech's 1U to 6U plans list 200 to 1,200 W "starting at" $65 to $99 a month by city, but the starting price doesn't say which wattage it buys. Ask both for a written power allowance before you count on them.

Run your chosen model through the cost to run pages first. A model that fits on one card saves you a lot of kilowatts.

What a kilowatt costs in colocation

On published US plans, a kilowatt of colocation power costs about $210 to $470 a month, with cooling, backup power and a network port included. Wholesale buyers pay less: CBRE put Northern Virginia at $190 to $235 per kW a month in early 2026, but that's for 250 to 500 kW deals.

If you used the whole allowance around the clock, that's about $0.28 to $0.65 per kWh. The US commercial average is 13.85 cents per kWh, according to the EIA. So colo power costs two to five times what your office pays for the same electricity. You're paying for the cooling, the generator, the security and the network that come with it.

Why amps and usable kW differ. US data centers sell circuits in amps and volts, but you can only load a circuit to about 80% continuously. Psychz prints this on its page: a 20 A, 120 V circuit is "1.92kW Usable", and a 30 A, 208 V circuit is "5kW Usable". Always compare plans on usable kW.

Other published per-kWh prices for reference: HA Hosting £0.40 ($0.53) and CloudKleyer €0.32 ($0.36), against UK business electricity of about 46 cents and German of about 37 cents per kWh (government statistics, converted at the ECB rate of 25 Sep 2026).

Setup fees, remote hands, cross-connects and bandwidth

For one small box, the extras are mostly modest, but read them before you sign. Most plans above have no setup fee. Remote hands is where the surprise bills come from.

• Setup. Free at FDC, Colocation America and on Tier.Net's shared plans. Tier.Net's private racks charge $199 to $350; CloudKleyer charges €50 ($57); Psychz charges nothing on its Dallas half cabinet and $2,250 on an Ashburn full cabinet.
• Remote hands. Someone in the building reboots, re-cables or swaps a drive for you. HA Hosting includes "a daily 15-minute allowance". Colocation America includes free basic remote hands and reboots, and WebNX lists "Included support". FDC gives an hourly rate once you pick a location. No US provider in this set publishes that hourly rate. One colo operator, 515 Engine, says it has seen $100 to $200 an hour, billed in 15 or 30 minute increments.
• Cross-connects. A cable to another network in the same building. A single AI server that just needs the internet doesn't need one. If you do, 515 Engine has seen anything from $50 once to $350 a month. NOCIX in Kansas City includes a free fiber cross-connect to the local internet exchange.
• Bandwidth. Usually included: 30 TB on Tier.Net's half rack, unmetered 10 Gbps at FDC, 25 TB at HA Hosting (then £0.01 per GB), 10 TB on VeloxServ's 4U (then £5 per TB). An internal AI tool uses very little.
• Contract length. FDC and HA Hosting are monthly. Psychz's Dallas prices need a one-year agreement.
• Form factor. A tower workstation needs a plan that takes towers, as HA Hosting's does, or a rackmount chassis. FDC's GPU plan is "Up to 4U".

Colo vs office closet vs renting over three years

For a two-GPU RTX PRO 6000 box running around the clock, an office closet costs about $53,900 over three years, a colocated half rack about $66,700, and renting the same two cards 24/7 about $80,900 to $86,200. Colocation adds about $15,400 to owning. It buys you cooling, clean power and a fast network, not a lower bill.

The same sum for three boxes, all running 24/7, with a 20% resale value, four admin hours a month at $68 an hour, and US commercial power for the office:

Rental prices are from aliteq's own GPU price tracker, 27 September 2026. The resale value, admin time and 24/7 use are my assumptions. The closet column doesn't include any electrician or air-conditioning work, which I couldn't price because it's quote-only.

Three things stand out:

• Colo raises the bar for owning. Against renting on Runpod, the two-GPU box has to work 14.7 hours a day in a closet but 18.6 hours a day in colocation. The four-GPU box goes from 11.1 to 12.9 hours a day.
• A single RTX 5090 shouldn't be colocated. $31,076 over three years is more than renting the same card around the clock on Vast or Runpod. It never breaks even.
• Bigger boxes spread the rack cost. A $429 half rack is half of a single RTX 5090 box's three-year bill in colocation, but 17% of a four-GPU box's.

Change the box, the power price, the hours and the admin time here. The calculator covers owning in an office; to add colocation, add $15,444 for a $429 plan over 36 months and drop the power line:

When colocation is the right call

Colocate when the box is busy most of the day and the office can't host it. That usually means one of three things: it's too loud or hot for the room, the office circuit can't carry it, or people outside the office depend on it being up.

Heat. Every kilowatt a server draws becomes about 3,412 BTU an hour of heat, according to the EIA. A two-GPU box at 730 W puts out about 2,500 BTU an hour. A four-card box with 600 W GPUs at full load puts out about 2.6 kW of heat, around the clock, in whatever room it's in.

Power. One ordinary 15 A, 120 V office circuit can carry about 1.44 kW continuously, if nothing else is on it. That covers a one or two GPU box; a four-card Max-Q box at 1.45 kW is right at the limit, so give it a 20 A circuit. A four-card box with 600 W GPUs needs about 2.65 kW, which means a 208 or 240 V circuit or two circuits, so an electrician first.

Uptime and bandwidth. A data center gives you backup generators, redundant cooling and a fast connection. That matters if customers or remote staff use the model, and much less if it's an internal tool used in office hours.

If none of those apply, keep the box in the office. If the box wouldn't be busy most of the day, the three-year cost comparison usually points to renting or an API instead.

How to buy colocation for one GPU server

Ask for power first and space second. The rack units are cheap; the kilowatts are the price.

1. Know your peak draw. Add up the GPUs' board power and about 250 W for the rest, or read the power supply label. Ask for a plan with at least that much usable kW.
2. Ask for per-kW pricing. Psychz's page says it plainly: "If you are deploying one GPU server, ask about power-based (per-kW) options". Don't buy a full cabinet you won't fill.
3. Get the power terms in writing. Volts, amps, whether the figure is usable or nominal, and what happens if you go over.
4. Price remote hands before you need them. Ask for the hourly rate and the billing increment.
5. Check the contract length and setup fee. Monthly terms matter for a first box.
6. Plan the shipping. A GPU tower in a courier box needs proper packing, and some plans only take rackmount servers.

The rest of the Cloud & IT Infrastructure section prices the other decisions a small company faces, from managed IT to backups.