on

Can the Apple M4 Max (36 GB) run DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 70B?

50Fair quality (C) · 50 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 6/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.

No, it doesn’t fit

No. DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 70B needs about 33.4 GB even at Q2_K; the Apple M4 Max (36 GB) has 24.1 GB usable.

Download DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 70B

Recommended: Q2_K. Every other quantization has its own download link in the table below.

Quickest · Ollama

One command downloads a ready-to-run version and starts a chat.

Get Ollama at ollama.com/download (opens in a new tab) · model page (opens in a new tab)

ollama run deepseek-r1:70b

Quantized files · GGUF

Works in LM Studio, llama.cpp, Jan and Ollama. No sign-in needed.

Download the Q2_K file (opens in a new tab)

huggingface.co/unsloth/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/unsloth/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B-GGUF:Q2_K

Original weights · Hugging Face

Full-precision files from DeepSeek, for fine-tuning, vLLM, Transformers.

huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

Reference code, inference scripts and docs from DeepSeek. The weights themselves download from Hugging Face.

github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 (opens in a new tab)

The R1 repo covers the distilled models too.

git clone https://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1

Links checked 3 days ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How it’s rated

Quality 50Fair quality (C) · 50 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 6/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.
How capable the model itself is at Q2_K, from its editorial quality tier scaled by the quantization or precision. It’s the same on any hardware that runs this variant. Scale: A+ 85+ · A 70+ · B 55+ · C 40+ · D under 40.
Runs Won't run
How well it runs on the Apple M4 Max (36 GB): speed, capped by how well it fits in memory. Runs great: 30+ tokens/s (or near the image, video or decision speed target) · Runs well: 10+ tokens/s · Slow: 3+ tokens/s · Very slow: under 3 · Won’t run: doesn’t fit even with offload. A tight fit or RAM offload caps it at Runs well; heavy offload caps it at Slow.

Match score

To order lists, each result also gets a match score out of 100 from four parts. It favors the most capable model that still runs well.

Model qualityEditorial quality tier of the model, scaled by the quantization or precision used.6.8 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when the model fits in the share of unified memory the GPU can use; fewer when it goes past that limit.0.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.0.0 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.0.0 / 15
Match score6.8 / 100

The match score orders results; it is not shown as a grade. Quality and Runs are the two ratings in the tables.

It doesn’t fit, so only a reduced share of the quality points counts and fit, speed and memory use score zero.

Every quantization on the Apple M4 Max (36 GB)

Quant Memory needed Available Speed Runs Quality Download
Q2_K 33.4 GB 24.1 GB — Won't run 50Fair quality (C) · 50 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 6/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF (opens in a new tab)
Q3_K_M 39.8 GB 24.1 GB — Won't run 60Good quality (B) · 60 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 8/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF (opens in a new tab)
Q4_K_M 48.2 GB 24.1 GB — Won't run 68Good quality (B) · 68 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 9/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF (opens in a new tab)
Q5_K_M 55.3 GB 24.1 GB — Won't run 69Good quality (B) · 69 of 100: how capable the model is at Q5_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 9/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF (opens in a new tab)
Q6_K 63.1 GB 24.1 GB — Won't run 71Great quality (A) · 71 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 9/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF · folder (opens in a new tab)
Q8_0 80.0 GB 24.1 GB — Won't run 72Great quality (A) · 72 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 9/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF · folder (opens in a new tab)
F16 146 GB 24.1 GB — Won't run 72Great quality (A) · 72 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 9/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF · folder (opens in a new tab) Original weights (opens in a new tab)

Memory figures assume 8K of context. Longer conversations or documents grow the KV cache.

Hardware that can run it

Models that do run on the Apple M4 Max (36 GB)

Quick answers

How much memory does DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 70B need on the M4 Max 36GB?

Even at Q2_K it needs about 33.4 GB; the M4 Max 36GB has 24.1 GB usable.

What can the M4 Max 36GB run instead?

Gemma 4 26B-A4B, Nex N2 Mini (35B-A3B) and KAT-Coder V2.5 Dev (35B-A3B) run best on it; the page lists more, each with its speed.

What hardware can run DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 70B?

NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96GB, M4 Max 64GB and M2 Ultra 192GB run it; the page lists more, each with its speed.

Estimates come from published hardware specs and our open formulas, not from running the model on your machine. Real speed varies with runtime, drivers and settings. Numbers marked “Measured” come from a linked benchmark.

Was this page helpful?