Mac mini M1 16GB

Apple · M1 · 16GB Unified Memory · Can run 36 models

Buy Apple
Manufacturer Apple
Unified Mem 16 GB
Chip M1
CPU Cores 8
GPU Cores 8
Neural Engine 16
Bandwidth 68 GB/s
MSRP $899
Released Nov 17, 2020

AI Notes

The Mac mini M1 16GB is a budget-friendly desktop option for local AI. With 16GB unified memory it can handle 7B models comfortably and attempt 13B with Q4 quantization. Its active cooling gives it a thermal advantage over the fanless MacBook Air M1 for sustained inference workloads.

Compatible Models

Model Parameters Best Quant VRAM Used Fit Est. Speed
Gemma 3 1B 1B Q8_0 2 GB Runs ~34 tok/s
Llama 3.2 1B 1B Q8_0 3 GB Runs ~23 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 1.5B 1.5B Q8_0 3 GB Runs ~23 tok/s
Gemma 2 2B 2B Q8_0 4 GB Runs ~17 tok/s
Llama 3.2 3B 3B Q8_0 5 GB Runs ~14 tok/s
Phi-3 Mini 3.8B 3.8B Q8_0 5.8 GB Runs ~12 tok/s
Phi-4 Mini 3.8B 3.8B Q4_K_M 4.5 GB Runs ~15 tok/s
Gemma 3 4B 4B Q4_K_M 5 GB Runs ~14 tok/s
Qwen 3 4B 4B Q4_K_M 4.5 GB Runs ~15 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 7B 7B Q8_0 9 GB Runs ~8 tok/s
Mistral 7B 7B Q8_0 9 GB Runs ~8 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 7B 7B Q8_0 9 GB Runs ~8 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 Coder 7B 7B Q8_0 9 GB Runs ~8 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 8B 8B Q4_K_M 7.5 GB Runs ~9 tok/s
Llama 3.1 8B 8B Q8_0 10 GB Runs ~7 tok/s
Qwen 3 8B 8B Q4_K_M 7.5 GB Runs ~9 tok/s
Gemma 2 9B 9B Q8_0 11 GB Runs ~6 tok/s
Gemma 3 12B 12B Q4_K_M 10.5 GB Runs ~6 tok/s
Mistral Nemo 12B 12B Q4_K_M 9.5 GB Runs ~7 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 14B 14B Q4_K_M 9.9 GB Runs ~7 tok/s
Phi-4 14B 14B Q4_K_M 9.9 GB Runs ~7 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 14B 14B Q4_K_M 9.9 GB Runs ~7 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 Coder 14B 14B Q4_K_M 12 GB Runs ~6 tok/s
Qwen 3 14B 14B Q4_K_M 12 GB Runs ~6 tok/s
Codestral 22B 22B Q4_K_M 14.7 GB Runs (tight) ~5 tok/s
StarCoder2 15B 15B Q8_0 17 GB CPU Offload ~4 tok/s
Devstral 24B 24B Q4_K_M 17 GB CPU Offload ~4 tok/s
Mistral Small 3.1 24B 24B Q4_K_M 18 GB CPU Offload ~4 tok/s
Gemma 2 27B 27B Q4_K_M 17.7 GB CPU Offload ~4 tok/s
Gemma 3 27B 27B Q4_K_M 20 GB CPU Offload ~3 tok/s
Qwen 3 30B-A3B (MoE) 30B Q4_K_M 22 GB CPU Offload ~3 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 32B 32B Q4_K_M 20.7 GB CPU Offload ~3 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 32B 32B Q4_K_M 20.7 GB CPU Offload ~3 tok/s
Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B 32B Q4_K_M 23 GB CPU Offload ~3 tok/s
Qwen 3 32B 32B Q4_K_M 23 GB CPU Offload ~3 tok/s
Command R 35B 35B Q4_K_M 22.5 GB CPU Offload ~3 tok/s
7 model(s) are too large for this hardware.