Can the Apple M5 (32 GB) run gpt-oss 120B?

No, it doesn’t fit

No. gpt-oss 120B needs about 69.2 GB even at MXFP4; the Apple M5 (32 GB) has 21.4 GB usable.

Download gpt-oss 120B

Recommended: MXFP4. 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 gpt-oss:120b

Quantized files · GGUF

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

Download the MXFP4 file (opens in a new tab)

huggingface.co/ggml-org/gpt-oss-120b-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/ggml-org/gpt-oss-120b-GGUF:MXFP4

Original weights · Hugging Face

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

huggingface.co/openai/gpt-oss-120b (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

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

github.com/openai/gpt-oss (opens in a new tab)

git clone https://github.com/openai/gpt-oss

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

How it’s rated

Quality 84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at MXFP4, whatever it runs on. Match score 11/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.: How capable the model itself is at MXFP4, 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 M5 (32 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.	11.3 / 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 score	11.3 / 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 M5 (32 GB)

Quant	Memory needed	Available	Speed	Runs	Quality	Download
`MXFP4`	69.2 GB	21.4 GB	—	Won't run	84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at MXFP4, whatever it runs on. Match score 11/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (opens in a new tab) Original weights (opens in a new tab)
`F16`	236 GB	21.4 GB	—	Won't run	84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 11/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.	GGUF (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

84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at MXFP4, whatever it runs on. Match score 92/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (128 GB) MXFP4 · 47.7 tok/s · Runs great
84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at MXFP4, whatever it runs on. Match score 92/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Apple M4 Max (128 GB) MXFP4 · 86.0 tok/s · Runs great
84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at MXFP4, whatever it runs on. Match score 92/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA GB10 (128 GB) MXFP4 · 56.9 tok/s · Runs great
84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at MXFP4, whatever it runs on. Match score 92/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell MXFP4 · 181 tok/s · Runs great
84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at MXFP4, whatever it runs on. Match score 92/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. NVIDIA RTX Spark N1X (6144-core GPU) (128 GB) MXFP4 · 61.3 tok/s · Runs great
84Great quality (A) · 84 of 100: how capable the model is at MXFP4, whatever it runs on. Match score 90/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Apple M2 Ultra (192 GB) MXFP4 · 111 tok/s · Runs great

Models that do run on the Apple M5 (32 GB)

87Excellent quality (A+) · 87 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 93/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Gemma 4 26B-A4B Q4_K_M · 37.2 tok/s
83Great quality (A) · 83 of 100: how capable the model is at Q4_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 90/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Raon-1 mini Preview (30B-A4B) Q4_K_M · 33.4 tok/s
78Great quality (A) · 78 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 89/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Qwen3.6 35B-A3B Q3_K_M · 56.9 tok/s
78Great quality (A) · 78 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 89/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. MiniCPM-V 4.7 35B-A3B Q3_K_M · 56.9 tok/s
78Great quality (A) · 78 of 100: how capable the model is at Q3_K_M, whatever it runs on. Match score 89/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. Qwen3.5 35B-A3B Q3_K_M · 56.9 tok/s

Quick answers

How much memory does gpt-oss 120B need on the M5 32GB?

Even at MXFP4 it needs about 69.2 GB; the M5 32GB has 21.4 GB usable.

What can the M5 32GB run instead?

Gemma 4 26B-A4B, Raon-1 mini Preview (30B-A4B) and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B run best on it; the page lists more, each with its speed.

What hardware can run gpt-oss 120B?

AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 128GB, M4 Max 128GB and NVIDIA GB10 128GB 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.