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mirekrusinyesterday at 2:05 PM1 replyview on HN

32GB is not enough, it's unified/shared memory, you need to have space for usual system and user apps/services.

64GB+ or dedicated 48GB (2x24 on GPUs) is IMHO absolute minimum.


Replies

redox99yesterday at 7:50 PM

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.

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