Home / Can I run it? / Llama 3.1 8B / Llama 3.1 8B on a Mac mini 16GB

Yes, but it is tight. Llama 3.1 8B at Q8_0 needs about 10.8 GB, and the Mac mini M6 16GB has 12.0 GB usable at a ~4k context.

Can I run Llama 3.1 8B on a Mac mini 16GB?

Llama 3.1 8B at Q8_0 needs about 10.8 GB, and the Mac mini M6 16GB has 12.0 GB usable. That figure is 16 GB of unified memory on the spec sheet, of which 12.0 GB is usable for weights and cache, at 153 GB/s memory bandwidth. Meta’s widely used 8B instruct model, the default small local chat model for a few years running. These are estimates from our formula, not measured benchmarks.

Quant that fits

Q8_0 Fits, short context only

Memory needed

10.8 GB at Q8_0, ~4k context

Usable unified memory

12.0 GB of 16 GB unified memory

Est. tokens/sec

8–14 estimate

Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct · Mac mini M6 16GB · Everything this machine runs · Q4 vs Q8 vs FP16

Memory at each quant

Estimated tokens per second

Estimate: 8–14 tokens/sec at Q8_0. This is a bandwidth-derived range, not a bench. Efficiency is a 45–80% unified-memory band from How we calculate.

Context headroom

At Q8_0, this machine has headroom out to about 8k tokens under our KV estimate. Longer chats need more memory for the cache. Figures assume an FP16 KV cache.

From the model’s config. Try other sizes in the VRAM calculator or see the context length guide.

What to do instead

• Run R1 Distill 7B instead (6.3 GB at Q4). It is a different model, not a drop-in, but it does fit this machine.
• Keep context short, close other GPU work, and avoid a higher quant. The VRAM calculator shows how the KV cache grows.
• See the best GPU for this model family and the Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct model page.

Other hardware for Llama 3.1 8B

• Llama 3.1 8B on an RTX 3060 12GBTight
• Llama 3.1 8B on an RTX 3070 TiFits
• Llama 3.1 8B on an RTX 3080Fits
• Llama 3.1 8B on an RTX 4060 Ti 16GBFits
• Llama 3.1 8B on an RTX 4070 Ti SuperFits
• Llama 3.1 8B on an RTX 4090Fits

Other models on a Mac mini 16GB

• Qwen3-32B on a Mac mini 16GBWon’t fit
• Qwen3-30B-A3B on a Mac mini 16GBWon’t fit
• Qwen3.8-27B on a Mac mini 16GBWon’t fit
• Gemma 3 27B on a Mac mini 16GBWon’t fit
• Gemma 4 31B on a Mac mini 16GBWon’t fit
• gpt-oss-20b on a Mac mini 16GBWon’t fit