Yes. DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B fits on the Mac mini M4 Pro 64GB at Q8, with 7.8 GB of headroom. Usable memory is 44.8 GB.
Can the Mac mini M4 Pro 64GB run DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B?
Data updated . Last reviewed the same day, when this catalog snapshot was written.
Usable memory on this 64 GB unified-memory config is 44.8 GB (70% of the sticker figure). A result under 2 GB of headroom is labeled tight.
Quant ladder
| Quant | Estimate | Headroom | Est. tok/s | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 | 22.0 GB | 22.8 GB | 13.8 tok/s | Yes |
| Q8 | 37.0 GB | 7.8 GB | 7.84 tok/s | Yes |
| FP16 | 78.6 GB | -33.8 GB | 4.17 tok/s | No |
- GGUF file size plus an FP16 KV-cache estimate at 8,192 tokens. The cache counts only the layers and heads named in the method on the About page.
- Formula estimate: parameter count × bytes per weight × 1.20. No GGUF file size is stored for this quant.
- Tokens/sec is a bandwidth roofline: GB/s divided by active weight GB. It is not a measured generation speed.
KV cache at 8K and 32K
FP16 KV-cache estimate: 2.1 GB at 8,192 tokens and 8.6 GB at 32,768 tokens. GQA counts two tensors (K and V) for the stored KV heads and head dimension. config.json also sets a sliding window of 131,072 tokens. The figures above assume every counted layer stores the full context, so they can overstate cache on sliding layers.
Offload
This machine has one memory pool. Weights are not offloaded to a second bank of system RAM.
Ollama
This command pulls the Q4_K_M file from unsloth/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B-GGUF, the Hub repo whose file size is used above. It is not an official Ollama library tag.
ollama run hf.co/unsloth/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B-GGUF:Q4_K_M
Other picks
- Cheapest catalog device at Q4: Radeon RX 7900 XTX
- Closest catalog model that still fits at Q4: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct.
All hardware for DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B · All models for the Mac mini M4 Pro 64GB
Questions
- How much memory does DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B need at Q4?
- The Q4 figure used here is 22.0 GB. GGUF file size plus an FP16 KV-cache estimate at 8,192 tokens. The cache counts only the layers and heads named in the method on the About page.
- Can the Mac mini M4 Pro 64GB run DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B?
- Yes. DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B fits on the Mac mini M4 Pro 64GB at Q8, with 7.8 GB of headroom. Usable memory is 44.8 GB.
- What is the cheapest catalog device that runs DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B at Q4?
- Radeon RX 7900 XTX, list price $999.
- How fast is DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B on the Mac mini M4 Pro 64GB, as a bandwidth estimate?
- About 7.84 tok/s at Q8. That is device bandwidth divided by active weight bytes, not a measured run.