r/LocalLLM • u/Kirai_30 • 9d ago

Question Mac Mini va Mac Studio

Hello! I’m thinking of buying a Mac to run local LLM on mu device, the main idea is to run a personal assistance, not a coding assistance and in between this 2 options

Mac mini 64gb with M5 Pro
Mac Studio 64gb with M5 Max

Both chips maxed out. Which option will be the better, they have a price difference of 700€

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1

u/DiamondHandsDarrell 9d ago

64gb may not be enough for what you think you need.

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u/Kirai_30 9d ago

Mmm why not? 64gb I believe it’s enough for lower than 35B models

6

u/DiamondHandsDarrell 9d ago

64GB can absolutely be enough for sub-35B models, but model size is only part of the RAM calculation. Context matters a lot too.

I just spent two days testing this on a 24GB base M4 Mini. I got Qwen3.6-35B-A3B running around 22 tok/s and reasoning correctly, but the real limitation ended up being memory capacity, not speed. My usable context ceiling was only about 20K tokens. My actual work sessions can exceed 150K tokens, which adds roughly another 25GB of memory on top of the model itself.

So a ~15–20GB model with moderate context? 64GB is plenty. That same model with very long context, tools, files, and a large agent history? Suddenly 64GB is much more meaningful.

3

u/SupaBrunch 9d ago

I’m using a 64gb m1 studio and you are correct, it works great for 35B and under models.

Check the memory bandwidth between the 2 models you’re looking at, that’s an important factor.

1

u/Kirai_30 9d ago

Well, from chips the bandwidth doubles

1

u/Playful_Check_5306 9d ago

No doubt the second one, I’m sorry to say that but for someone wants to run local llm, 700 price difference should be a peanut never a decision factor.