DeepSeek on Apple M4
Can I run DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen 32B on an Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB?
Yes. DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen 32B at Q4_K_M uses 21.2 GB of the 36.0 GB available on a Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB, and runs at about 8.92 tokens per second. You can push the context to 67K.
Runs comfortably
21.2 GB of 36.0 GB · 59%036 GB
Weights
18.6 GB
KV cache
2.0 GB
Runtime overhead
0.5 GB
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen 32B at Q4_K_M leaves 14.8 GB spare on a Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB. There is room to raise the context length or move up a quantisation level.
Generation8.92tok/s
Prompt processing109tok/s
Max context67Ktokens
KV per 1K tokens0GB
Every quantisation of DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen 32B on a Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB
Highlighted row is the highest quality that still fits at 8K context.
| Quantisation | bpw | Weights | Total | Verdict | Max ctx | tok/s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP16 / BF16 | 16.00 | 61.0 GB | 63.6 GB | Won't fit | — | 1.14 |
| INT8 / W8A8 | 8.50 | 32.1 GB | 34.6 GB | Fits, but tight | 14K | 5.30 |
| Q8_0 (GGUF) | 8.50 | 32.1 GB | 34.6 GB | Fits, but tight | 14K | 5.30 |
| FP8 (E4M3) | 8.00 | 30.5 GB | 33.0 GB | Fits, but tight | 20K | 5.56 |
| Q6_K | 6.56 | 25.0 GB | 27.6 GB | Runs comfortably | 42K | 6.73 |
| Q5_K_M | 5.67 | 21.6 GB | 24.2 GB | Runs comfortably | 55K | 7.74 |
| Q5_K_S | 5.52 | 21.1 GB | 23.6 GB | Runs comfortably | 58K | 7.94 |
| Q4_K_M | 4.85 | 18.6 GB | 21.2 GB | Runs comfortably | 67K | 8.92 |
| AWQ 4-bit | 4.25 | 18.3 GB | 20.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 68K | 9.05 |
| GPTQ 4-bit | 4.25 | 18.3 GB | 20.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 68K | 9.05 |
| MXFP4 | 4.25 | 18.3 GB | 20.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 68K | 9.05 |
| Q4_K_S | 4.58 | 17.6 GB | 20.2 GB | Runs comfortably | 71K | 9.39 |
| Q4_0 | 4.55 | 17.5 GB | 20.1 GB | Runs comfortably | 72K | 9.45 |
| IQ4_XS | 4.25 | 16.4 GB | 19.0 GB | Runs comfortably | 76K | 10.0 |
| Q3_K_M | 3.91 | 15.2 GB | 17.7 GB | Runs comfortably | 81K | 10.8 |
| IQ3_M | 3.70 | 14.4 GB | 17.0 GB | Runs comfortably | 84K | 11.3 |
| IQ3_XXS | 3.06 | 12.1 GB | 14.7 GB | Runs comfortably | 93K | 13.3 |
| Q2_K | 2.63 | 10.6 GB | 13.1 GB | Runs comfortably | 100K | 15.1 |
| IQ2_XXS | 2.06 | 8.5 GB | 11.0 GB | Runs comfortably | 108K | 18.4 |
| IQ1_M | 1.75 | 7.4 GB | 9.9 GB | Runs comfortably | 112K | 20.9 |