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redox99yesterday at 7:50 PM2 repliesview on HN

32GB of fast unified memory is enough for Qwen 3.8 27B.

- 16GB for the weights at Q4

- 9GB for the full 256K context at Q8

- 7GB spare for overhead and system.

The problem is that these Macs have 32GB of slow unified memory.

Edit: I'm thinking of a headless Mac mini, if you meant running it on the same machine you're using of course you'll need more memory, but LLMs are best served from a headless server so that's what I'd recommend.


Replies

hawk_yesterday at 9:21 PM

Is this for setup for agentic coding? Why not also run the IDE compiler etc... on the same machine to use those CPU cores as well?

show 2 replies
qeternityyesterday at 10:27 PM

> Edit: I'm thinking of a headless Mac mini, if you meant running it on the same machine you're using of course you'll need more memory, but LLMs are best served from a headless server so that's what I'd recommend.

What? LLMs are best served from a massive PD disaggregated cluster of B300s connected via NVLink.

If you're running LLMs on a Mac Mini, it's because you want to run local, not because it's the best setup.