Can an M3 Max 36GB Mac run DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
M3 Max · 36 GB unified memory · 300 GB/s · MacBook Pro 14" (M3 Max), MacBook Pro 16" (M3 Max)
DeepSeek V4.1 Flash needs about 458.6 GiB but an M3 Max 36GB Mac has only ~30.6 GiB available for a model — you are 428.0 GiB short. macOS will swap to SSD and generation will crawl.
Where the memory goes
Three things occupy memory when a model is loaded: the weights themselves, the KV cache that holds the conversation, and the runtime's own working buffers. Only the first is fixed — the KV cache grows with every token in your context.
| Quantisation | Weights | Total | Tok/s | Fits? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FP16 | 1421.6 GiB | 1494.1 GiB | 0 | No |
| Q8_0 | 755.2 GiB | 794.4 GiB | 0 | No |
| Q6_K | 586.4 GiB | 617.2 GiB | 0 | No |
| Q5_K_M | 506.4 GiB | 533.2 GiB | 0 | No |
| Q4_K_M | 435.4 GiB | 458.6 GiB | 1 | No |
| Q3_K_M | 346.5 GiB | 365.3 GiB | 1 | No |
| Q2_K | 266.5 GiB | 281.3 GiB | 1 | No |
The default. Best quality-per-gigabyte for most people.
How long a context fits
The KV cache is often what breaks a setup that looked fine at load time. Quantising it to 8-bit roughly halves its footprint with little measurable quality cost.
| Context | KV cache | Total | FP16 KV | Q8 KV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2K | 0.2 GiB | 457.9 GiB | No | No |
| 4K | 0.3 GiB | 458.1 GiB | No | No |
| 8K | 0.6 GiB | 458.6 GiB | No | No |
| 16K | 1.3 GiB | 459.5 GiB | No | No |
| 32K | 2.5 GiB | 461.3 GiB | No | No |
| 128K | 10.0 GiB | 472.4 GiB | No | No |
What to run instead on an M3 Max 36GB Mac
These are the largest models that fit comfortably on this machine at Q4_K_M with an 8K context.
| Model | Size | Total | Tok/s | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B | 32.8B | 22.4 GiB | 12 | Yes, comfortably |
| Qwen2.5 32B | 32.8B | 22.4 GiB | 12 | Yes, comfortably |
| Qwen2.5-Coder 32B | 32.8B | 22.4 GiB | 12 | Yes, comfortably |
| Qwen3 32B | 32.8B | 22.4 GiB | 12 | Yes, comfortably |
| Qwen3 30B-A3B | 30.5B | 19.8 GiB | 74 | Yes, comfortably |
| Gemma 3 27B | 27.4B | 21.1 GiB | 14 | Yes, comfortably |
Macs that run DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
No Apple Silicon configuration in our list runs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash comfortably at Q4_K_M with an 8K context. This one needs a multi-GPU server.
Common questions
- Can an M3 Max 36GB Mac run DeepSeek V4.1 Flash?
- No. At Q4_K_M it needs about 458.6 GiB, and an M3 Max 36GB Mac has roughly 30.6 GiB available for a model after macOS takes its share.
- How fast is DeepSeek V4.1 Flash on an Mac?
- Around 1 tokens per second. Token generation on Apple Silicon is limited by memory bandwidth, and this machine has 300 GB/s.
- How much memory does DeepSeek V4.1 Flash need?
- 435.4 GiB for the weights at Q4_K_M, plus 0.6 GiB for an 8K-token KV cache and about 22.6 GiB of runtime overhead — 458.6 GiB in total.