HomeCan I run it?R1 Distill 14BR1 Distill 14B on an RTX 3070 Ti
No. R1 Distill 14B at Q4_K_M needs about 11.3 GB, and the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has 8.0 GB usable at a ~4k context.
Can I run R1 Distill 14B on an RTX 3070 Ti?
R1 Distill 14B at Q4_K_M needs about 11.3 GB, and the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has 8.0 GB usable. That figure is 8 GB of VRAM on the spec sheet, of which 8.0 GB is usable for weights and cache, at 608 GB/s memory bandwidth. A 14B DeepSeek-R1 distill on Qwen. Same memory class as other 14B dense models, with reasoning-tuned weights. These are estimates from our formula, not measured benchmarks.
- Quant that fits
- None of Q4, Q8 or FP16 needs 11.3 GB
- Memory needed
- 11.3 GB at Q4_K_M, ~4k context
- Usable VRAM
- 8.0 GB of 8 GB VRAM
- Est. tokens/sec
- n/a does not fit
Memory at each quant
| Quant | Need vs 8.0 GB | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M | 11.3 GB | Q4Won’t fit |
| Q8_0 | 19.0 GB | Q8Won’t fit |
| FP16 | 35.0 GB | FP16Won’t fit |
Estimated tokens per second
No speed estimate: R1 Distill 14B does not fit in the 8.0 GB this machine can use, so we do not publish a tokens/sec figure for CPU offload.
Context headroom
Even at a short ~4k context, the weights do not fit. Extending context would only increase the gap.
| Context | KV cache (FP16) | Total at Q4_K_M | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4k | 0.8 GB | 11.3 GB | Won’t fit |
| 8k | 1.6 GB | 12.1 GB | Won’t fit |
| 16k | 3.2 GB | 13.7 GB | Won’t fit |
| 32k | 6.4 GB | 16.9 GB | Won’t fit |
| 64k | 12.9 GB | 23.4 GB | Won’t fit |
| 128k | 25.8 GB | 36.3 GB | Won’t fit |
What to do instead
- Run Qwen3-8B instead (6.7 GB at Q4). It is a different model, not a drop-in, but it does fit this machine.
- To hold R1 Distill 14B at Q4, you need about 11.3 GB. The GeForce RTX 3060 12GB has 12.0 GB usable ($329 list price).
- Our estimate is only 3.3 GB over this machine’s usable memory, so a tighter quant or a shorter context may work in practice. We still mark it as a no under the published formula.
- CPU offload can load the weights anyway, but it is slow. We do not publish an offload tokens/sec figure.
- See the best GPU for this model family and the DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B model page.
Other hardware for R1 Distill 14B
- R1 Distill 14B on an RTX 3060 12GBTight
- R1 Distill 14B on an RTX 4090Fits
- R1 Distill 14B on an Arc B580Tight
- R1 Distill 14B on a Mac mini 16GBTight
Other models on an RTX 3070 Ti
- Qwen3-32B on an RTX 3070 TiWon’t fit
- Qwen3-30B-A3B on an RTX 3070 TiWon’t fit
- Qwen3.8-27B on an RTX 3070 TiWon’t fit
- Gemma 3 27B on an RTX 3070 TiWon’t fit
- Gemma 4 31B on an RTX 3070 TiWon’t fit
- gpt-oss-20b on an RTX 3070 TiWon’t fit
Quick answers
- Can I run R1 Distill 14B on an RTX 3070 Ti?
- No. R1 Distill 14B at Q4_K_M needs about 11.3 GB, and the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti has 8.0 GB usable.
- How much VRAM does R1 Distill 14B need?
- About 11.3 GB at Q4_K_M, 19.0 GB at Q8_0 and 35.0 GB at FP16, estimated for a ~4k context.
- How fast is R1 Distill 14B on an RTX 3070 Ti?
- We do not estimate tokens/sec when the model does not fit. CPU offload is possible but slow.
- What context length can I use?
- The weights already do not fit, so longer context is not the limiting factor.