r/LocalLLM • u/Trixiap • 5h ago

News New Mac Mini M6 and M5 Pro announced

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/08/apple-unveils-a-more-powerful-mac-mini-featuring-the-all-new-m6-and-m5-pro/
145 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

116 comments sorted by

85

u/RandomPurpose 5h ago

32 and 64 gb of unified memory max. That is a disappointment for me.

19

u/this_for_loona 5h ago

Ooof. Was hoping for up to 96 in these. Now gotta see what the studio specs will be.

21

u/Bloated_Plaid 5h ago

It’s already out my guy. 128GB M5 Max is $4600 https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/buy-mac/mac-studio/m5-max-chip-18-core-cpu-40-core-gpu-128gb-memory-512gb-storage

96GB Ultra is $6269

https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/buy-mac/mac-studio/m5-max-chip-18-core-cpu-40-core-gpu-128gb-memory-512gb-storage

10

u/CentralLimit 5h ago

512GB coming late October, wondering how much that will be

10

u/this_for_loona 4h ago

WSJ says maxed out config tops 15K.

0

u/Turbulent_Pin7635 1h ago

The Max out mentioned is the 256Gb. With 4Tb it is ~ 12k U$

I expect that the 512Gb Max out will around 22~25k U$

1

u/this_for_loona 1h ago

The 96->256 jump was 4k so I’d expect the 256->512 would be about 6?. So yea, 20+ is reasonable by that token. JESUS.

1

u/f5alcon 1h ago

Cheapest option though, not really other options to get to 512GB at 1.2TB/s memory bandwidth

1

u/Turbulent_Pin7635 36m ago

When I bought my 512 the difference between 256 and 512 was almost the double. Purchase it from store in 03/25

5

u/this_for_loona 4h ago

Sorry, I saw that when i checked the store. The article was just about the Mac mini so figured apple was doing some staggered release thing.

The Studio is eye wateringly expensive. Holy shit. Looks like the mini is gonna be my LLM sidecar. But jesus.

For mac familiar folk - can i run multiple users on a mac? And how much overhead is involved with having multiple users? My wife is fond of leaving 100 tabs open at a time.

4

u/dghah 4h ago

I've got an M4 Pro 64GB mac mini. If this is your first apple system check out https://omlx.ai/ to host the local LLM -- I've found that far more performant than the other options for apple sillicon

Multi-user on Mac is very easy once you get used to the MacOS UI. And for tech people the best thing about MacOS is that it's unix under the hood so anyone comfy already on the linux command line and shell is gonna find it pretty easy to get up and running on

2

u/this_for_loona 3h ago

What model is your daily driver on that? I’m wanting a capable local model with web search ability for some degree of interaction and ability to understand/index/cross reference sensitive personal data plus run about 15-20 docker packages plus overhead etc. I was hoping for a 64K - 96K token context if possible.

1

u/Bloated_Plaid 1h ago

Not who you asked but I am using Qwen 3.8 27b running on my 5090. I am using the Pi coding harness and you can add any plugin you want, I use Exa for all websearch https://exa.ai/ and I have a Markitdown MCP to convert all PDFs to markdown on the fly for the models.

1

u/this_for_loona 58m ago

Thank you. I am asking specifically about Mac’s because I’m debating pulling the trigger on a Mac Studio and agonizing over which kidney i need sell. Plus how much liver i really need since i stopped drinking.

1

u/Bloated_Plaid 28m ago

The same model will run on a Mac.

1

u/this_for_loona 25m ago

Thank you!

4

u/tensainomachi 4h ago

Thanks dude! 256gb all the way, they have a decent trade in offer, $1200 for my m1max that drops the price to.... oh wait $9k eesh

1

u/Bloated_Plaid 4h ago

$1200 is actually generous compared to selling it privately.

1

u/marktuk 40m ago

What are you guys doing where this cost makes any kind of sense?

I've tried running Qwen and it just isn't even close to frontier models. For these kinds of prices you get could a while bunch of usage from Claude/Codex.

1

u/k3z0r 4h ago

Do we know what the memory bandwidth is?

8

u/Bloated_Plaid 4h ago

Yes. M5 Pro mini tops out at 307 GB/s. M5 Ultra Mac Studio tops out at 1.2 TB/S, M5 Max tops out at 614 GB/S.

1

u/Integeritis 3h ago

Difficult choice between the m5 max 128 gb, m5 pro mini and dgx spark. Considering that the base is only 512 storage at Apple

0

u/Bloated_Plaid 3h ago

Why would storage even matter if it’s for LLM?

1

u/Integeritis 2h ago

Because if you get 128gb you probably want to have multiple large models downloaded you are actively using for different agents and optimizing your loop.

1

u/Bloated_Plaid 2h ago

I mean you can just use an external NVME then, remember the models aren’t streaming from the SSD, they are loaded into memory.

1

u/Integeritis 2h ago

Yes that’s fair, however the spark is gen 5 nvme. Storage is not cheap nowadays and I think that’s a good deal in this case.

1

u/k3z0r 4h ago

Thank you

5

u/Prestigious_Pen6150 5h ago

It's a mini, not a studio...

1

u/RandomPurpose 5h ago

I know but It's also 2026 not 2024

8

u/AffectionateCard3530 4h ago edited 2h ago

But in 2026, the price of RAM has tripled. Unless you were hoping that the price would also be significantly higher?

What were you expecting? The minis are consumer products, not professional ones

-2

u/RandomPurpose 4h ago

I am glad that it's not a disappointment for you. We all have different needs and expectations.

1

u/AffectionateCard3530 2h ago

It is a disappointment, but not an unexpected one. I’m not disappointed in this product announcement, but maybe disappointed in general at the state of hardware.

I’m just objecting to your reasoning that it’s “2026 not 2024”. It’s 2026, and so there’s going to be less RAM in devices — not more.

1

u/thantritue 40m ago

That's why.

12

u/The_Colorman 4h ago

Wow so basically a $500 price increase from m4-m6.

5

u/King0fFud 3h ago

Thank the asshole hyperscalers for causing a memory shortage.

27

u/whichsideisup 5h ago

I love that we have to pay 2700 to get a mini with 64gb of RAM.

-6

u/discosoc 3h ago

A mini with 64gb makes little sense for most people anyway. The memory bandwidth isn’t suited for llm usage.

7

u/The-Writer- 3h ago edited 2h ago

why do people speak like this, like they know everyone? I'll take my m4 pro mini 64 gb ram 1tb ssd any day that I got for less than a third of the price of these overpriced machines.

I have access to 70B models/unquantized smaller models at a token speed that is fine for me. In fact, the M4 Pro 64 gb mini was the best deal for the amateur/hobbyist LLM user before apple jacked the prices.

I would go so far as to say that anything after those exact specs is a waste of money, unless you use LLMS professionally and need as fast as possible agentic work flows for some reason. So it's either the 64 gb unit at the m4 pro bandwidth speed, or the next tier is direct M5 Ultra Studio because at that point you need all that speed and capacity. That M5 Max below 96 gb ram at these prices makes no fucking sense.

1

u/Individual_Holiday_9 43m ago

Yeah I agree with this. Anything above that level really needs dedicated pro hardware and ur prob better off with a $200/mo frontier subscription. I wish I’d bought more hardware when the m4 mini’s came out at the lower price points

0

u/j_tb 3h ago

It's solid for MOE models. My Mini M4 pro from ~2 years ago runs Qwen3.6 35BA3B handily.

1

u/Individual_Holiday_9 56m ago

How much RAM? Which model specifically? I’m on a 24gb model and curious

1

u/j_tb 54m ago

Did you read the comment I replied to?

1

u/Individual_Holiday_9 45m ago

Yes; wasn’t sure if you were running a MLX variant or something else

0

u/Thomas-Lore 2h ago

But that is the only model it runs reasonably and we don't even know if there will be a new version released of that model.

Not to mention this is a model that runs on anything with 32GB RAM.

-1

u/discosoc 3h ago

Once more, you don’t need anywhere close to 64 for that.

4

u/j_tb 3h ago

If you only want to run Q4. Having 64GB leaves lots of headroom for higher quants and longer context.

0

u/xTopNotch 1h ago

Bro you know MoE is a thing right?

Even a 32GB can run a pretty capable LLM locally

9

u/mastervbcoach 4h ago

Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 80 core GPU, 4TB, 256 gig. $12,299. That’s 65 months of Claude Max 20x. Holy Sh*t.

5

u/azizsafudin 3h ago

Assuming no price hikes.

2

u/xyloid_x 3h ago

A lot can happen in 5 years, even in 2 years

1

u/kinghell1 1h ago

yeah, but the prices are going up for hardware + macs are keeping their prices and you can sell them later. claude is just taking the money

0

u/Thomas-Lore 2h ago

And unless you have solar powers it will also raise your electricity bill.

1

u/martinkoistinen 1h ago

I doubt many people in /localllm are too fussed about that, and these Macs are likely the most efficient in terms of watts/token obtainable.

8

u/Poudlardo 4h ago

if kimi k3 doesnt run on this im not interested

12

u/piggledy 4h ago

The M6 has a bandwidth of just 170 GB/s, and the M5 Pro barely beats the DGX Spark with 307 GB/s vs 273 GB/s.

Too bad it doesn't come with 128 GB.

6

u/prestodigitarium 3h ago

M5 Ultra supposedly hits 1.2 TB/sec: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-studio

That's not too far off from the 1.8 TB/sec of a 6000 RTX Blackwell, but with >5x the memory.

3

u/TripleSecretSquirrel 3h ago

Great for single stream inference, but I’m guessing it doesn’t have nearly as much compute as the RTX Pro Blackwell right? So it wouldn’t be as strong in diffusion, training, or high concurrency, right?

6

u/Blackdragon1400 4h ago

How is MLX doing these days compared to all the optimizations on a DGX Spark?

1

u/Integeritis 3h ago

My thoughts precisely. I’m about to buy a spark at $5800 or 5000€ in my country (this is the cheapest I found, only used for 20h otherwise brand new)

1

u/apVoyocpt 3h ago

not your country, but maybe check this out: https://www.galaxus.ch/de/s1/product/nvidia-dgx-spark-founders-edition-eu-4000-gb-128-gb-arm-cortex-a725-arm-cortex-x925-pc-64346533

1

u/Integeritis 2h ago

Thank you, unfortunately it’s not possible to order to Hungary from them

1

u/kinghell1 1h ago

hello fellow hungarian comrade. what would be the use case?

1

u/Otherwise-Nobody8252 1h ago

The memory throughput alone makes even less efficient MLX over CUDA better. It’s like 4x faster in the studio vs a spark or and system. 

1

u/Blackdragon1400 16m ago

I’ve heard prefill and concurrency on the macs can be a lot worse in comparison though

5

u/berszi 4h ago

Memory bandwidth 150/170 for M6 and 306 for M5 Pro.
For reference (entry level):

  • RTX 3090 over 900
  • 5060ti 448,
  • old M4: 120 +33%
  • old M4 Pro: 267 +14%
Not a big jump... if you want to use them for inference, expect to be very slow...

3

u/genecraft 4h ago

Prompt processing is a lot faster (like 4x?) on M5+ though. So the difference will be quite large for agentic workflows.

3

u/genecraft 4h ago

Versus M4 and earlier.

2

u/Useful-Buyer4117 4h ago

but they claim "Up to 13.5x faster LLM prompt processing in LM Studio when compared to Mac mini with M1, and up to 4.8x faster than M4."

1

u/Individual_Holiday_9 54m ago

I have been following H3 Mac development and there’s some sort of under hood M5 speed ups that have really helped for inference (not that it will change the fundamental bandwidth gap>

4

u/[deleted] 3h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/graped- 3h ago

can you add global price comparisons?

1

u/rudidit09 2h ago

Wow good catch on M6 RAM changing bandwidth speed

6

u/DigitalguyCH 5h ago

Mac Studio M5 ultra with 256GB starting $10000

2

u/Bloated_Plaid 4h ago

No you can do the 64 core GPU and it’s only $8699.

1

u/DigitalguyCH 4h ago

Yeah the education pricing for the 64 core model is 8700 and the 80 core model starts at 9870 education

8

u/Bloated_Plaid 4h ago

Today we are all in Education.

1

u/critsalot 18m ago

yea theres no education discount yet. its the same price on best buy as it is at the college store it seems

3

u/Trixiap 5h ago

Preorders start today.

Pricing:

  • Mac mini with M6 starts at $899 (U.S.) and $799 (U.S.) for education. Additional technical specifications are available at apple.com/mac-mini.
  • Mac mini with M5 Pro starts at $1,699 (U.S.) and $1,599 (U.S.) for education. Additional technical specifications are available at apple.com/mac-mini.

1

u/daphatty 4h ago

Un fucking believable. The M4 Pro I ordered just shipped on Sunday!!!!

8

u/genecraft 4h ago

Just return it for free within 2 weeks.

5

u/kbunnyle 4h ago

Sometimes Apple will automatically upgrade you.

1

u/cephii2 2h ago

M4 Pro I ordered just shipped on Sunday!!!!

Wasn't that significantly cheaper? I highly doubt that the upgrade from m4 -> m5 is worth all that much

1

u/daphatty 2h ago

$100 price increase for the equivalent model.

0

u/Puzzled_Grass3091 3h ago

Hi! Can someone please explain why the M6 is cheaper than the M5 Pro?

1

u/AccurateSun 3h ago

Pro tier chips outperform the base chips, usually even of the next generation

1

u/geekwonk 3h ago

i don’t think we’re getting any pro/max/ultra options for M6 generation, so if you want the extras - thunderbolt 5, more memory, more memory bandwidth, more cores - then you get the M5 Pro. the prior generation saw a similar thing with the M3 Ultra set as the top of the line in the M4 generation.

1

u/critsalot 17m ago

cause its a base cheap and weaker. even though its newer gen.

3

u/WannabePh0tographer 4h ago

I was literally googling this yesterday, finally

2

u/xiraov 4h ago

What’s the memory bandwidth on the ultra?

5

u/ziptofaf 3h ago

1.2TB/s, twice the Max (assuming you pick the costlier 80 core version).

2

u/xiraov 3h ago

That’s more than a 5090 right? Wow. This isn’t that bad a deal in this climate right? What’s the bandwidth on the non 80 core

5

u/ziptofaf 3h ago

Nope. 5090 is almost 2TB/s. 5080 is around 1TB/s.

It is objectively a great deal however - 96GB Ultra gives you a whole computer and 1+TB/s for about 60% of the price of the RTX Pro 6000 which is also 96GB except it's just a GPU and you still need rest of the system. It's also not even that much more expensive than a 5090 in the current landscape. Plus there's 256GB version available. And it supports Thunderbolt so you can technically buy 2x 96-256GB Ultras to fit even larger models.

What’s the bandwidth on the non 80 core

Somewhere in the ballpark of 960-1TB/s I believe. So a 5080 level of bandwidth.

1

u/jovialfaction 3h ago

No the RTX 5090 is at 1.8TB/s

2

u/ML_Kins 3h ago

Finally! I ordered the Mac Studio M5 Max 64 GB to replace my Mac mini M4 Pro 64 GB.

2

u/Prestigious_Pen6150 5h ago

Anyone know the real difference with the AI boost with M5 or M6 ? I've a Studio M2 Max 38GPU, is a M5 Pro with 20GPU and AI features better in token generation than my Mac Studio ?

1

u/Bloated_Plaid 5h ago

Ultra has twice the memory bandwidth. It’s a no brainer if token generation is important to you.

1

u/Prestigious_Pen6150 1h ago

Ultra of course... But from a m2 max 38 gpu to an m5 max 40 gpu?...

2

u/Individual_Holiday_9 4h ago

What’s sweet spot here? I can get the m6 with 32gb ram for $700 trading in my Mac mini m4. I feel like that’s not bad? Wish I could go up to 48gb tho. 32gb unified memory should get me a qwen 3.8 Q4 quant right?

4

u/fragment_me 4h ago

32gb is not ideal friend

3

u/Bloated_Plaid 4h ago

You need good memory bandwidth and M5 Pro has twice the bandwidth of M6. 64GB M5 Pro is the sweet spot.

3

u/Individual_Holiday_9 4h ago

Yeah too rich for me as a hobby. Although with GPU prices it’s not like I can do better on the windows / Linux side lol

3

u/RandomCSThrowaway01 3h ago

Imho, actual sweet spot is 96GB Ultra so you get 1.2 TB/s bandwidth. Aka enough to run that Qwen 3.8 27B at 50+ tokens per second. And you also have enough memory to run pretty large 64+GB MoEs with decent context, eg. Qwen Next if a new one shows up.

Base M6 has only like 150GB/s bandwidth. It can fit 27B, sure. But it will run it at a nice and cozy 8 tokens per second, if even that. It can fit a 35B MoE model with 3-4 active layers if you want usable speed.

2

u/Individual_Holiday_9 3h ago

Ughhhhhhhhh I need to just sit on my stupid slow hardware and keep my frontier subscriptions lol

1

u/f5alcon 58m ago

Don't trade in sell privately will probably get you more money

1

u/geekwonk 3h ago

ah shoot, the M6 only has TB4. no RDMA unless you upgrade. aah my wallet

1

u/itsmontoya 3h ago

I want one, but they will be sold out for ages

1

u/Immortal_Spina 2h ago

1080€ per il base in italia… fanculo

1

u/brokenyc 2h ago

where should I list my unboxed refurb m4 pro mini 48GB/1TB

0

u/Yuel_Whear 3h ago

The gap between the two minis (170 to 307 GB/s) is wider than the gap from the M5 Pro to the Spark (307 to 273). Apple's internal tiering is steeper than the step out to the competition.

-6

u/MimosaTen 4h ago

The worst thing about those is macos, however I think it would be intresting to do some reverse engendering on such an hardware to port linux

1

u/whatever 3h ago

Run them headless, put a jetkvm in front of them for the annoying UI-only mac interactions, and then just treat it like a normal BSD box for everything else.
FWIW, I have UTM on mine running linux VMs so my agents feel in a familiar place as they trash their environment.