Home / Can I run it? / Qwen3.8-27B / Qwen3.8-27B on a Mac mini 24GB

No. Qwen3.8-27B at Q4_K_M needs about 20.4 GB, and the Mac mini M6 24GB has 18.0 GB usable at a ~4k context.

Can I run Qwen3.8-27B on a Mac mini 24GB?

Qwen3.8-27B at Q4_K_M needs about 20.4 GB, and the Mac mini M6 24GB has 18.0 GB usable. That figure is 24 GB of unified memory on the spec sheet, of which 18.0 GB is usable for weights and cache, at 170 GB/s memory bandwidth. Alibaba’s denser Qwen3.8 27B, a newer mid-size chat model in the same memory class as Gemma 3 27B. These are estimates from our formula, not measured benchmarks.

Quant that fits

None of Q4, Q8 or FP16 needs 20.4 GB

Memory needed

20.4 GB at Q4_K_M, ~4k context

Usable unified memory

18.0 GB of 24 GB unified memory

Est. tokens/sec

n/a does not fit

Qwen3.8-27B · Mac mini M6 24GB · Everything this machine runs · Q4 vs Q8 vs FP16

Memory at each quant

Estimated tokens per second

No speed estimate: Qwen3.8-27B does not fit in the 18.0 GB this machine can use, so we do not publish a tokens/sec figure for CPU offload.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.

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

What to do instead

• Run Mistral Small 24B instead (17.7 GB at Q4). It is a different model, not a drop-in, but it does fit this machine.
• To hold Qwen3.8-27B at Q4, you need about 20.4 GB. The GeForce RTX 3090 has 24.0 GB usable ($1499 list price).
• Our estimate is only 2.4 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 We do not publish an offload tokens/sec figure.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 Qwen3.8-27B model page.

Other hardware for Qwen3.8-27B

• Qwen3.8-27B on an RTX 3060 12GBWon’t fit
• Qwen3.8-27B on an RTX 3070 TiWon’t fit
• Qwen3.8-27B on an RTX 3080Won’t fit
• Qwen3.8-27B on an RTX 3090Fits
• Qwen3.8-27B on an RTX 4060 Ti 16GBWon’t fit
• Qwen3.8-27B on an RTX 4070 Ti SuperWon’t fit

Other models on a Mac mini 24GB

• Qwen3-32B on a Mac mini 24GBWon’t fit
• Qwen3-30B-A3B on a Mac mini 24GBWon’t fit
• Gemma 3 27B on a Mac mini 24GBWon’t fit
• Gemma 4 31B on a Mac mini 24GBWon’t fit
• gpt-oss-20b on a Mac mini 24GBFits
• Mistral Small 24B on a Mac mini 24GBTight