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Can the Apple M5 (16 GB) run Qwen3-VL 30B-A3B Thinking?

53Fair quality (C) · 53 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 7/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking.

No, it doesn’t fit

No. Qwen3-VL 30B-A3B Thinking needs about 14.7 GB even at Q2_K; the Apple M5 (16 GB) has 10.7 GB usable.

Download Qwen3-VL 30B-A3B Thinking

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 qwen3-vl:30b-a3b-thinking

Quantized files · GGUF

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

huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Thinking-GGUF (opens in a new tab)

ollama run hf.co/Qwen/Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Thinking-GGUF

Original weights · Hugging Face

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

huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-VL-30B-A3B-Thinking (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

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

How it’s rated

Quality 53Fair quality (C) · 53 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 7/100 (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 M5 (16 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.7.2 / 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 score7.2 / 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 (16 GB)

Quant Memory needed Available Speed Runs Quality Download
Q2_K 14.7 GB 10.7 GB — Won't run 53Fair quality (C) · 53 of 100: how capable the model is at Q2_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 7/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q3_K_M 17.5 GB 10.7 GB — Won't run 63Good quality (B) · 63 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 files (opens in a new tab)
Q4_K_M 21.2 GB 10.7 GB — Won't run 72Great quality (A) · 72 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 24.3 GB 10.7 GB — Won't run 73Great quality (A) · 73 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 files (opens in a new tab)
Q6_K 27.7 GB 10.7 GB — Won't run 75Great quality (A) · 75 of 100: how capable the model is at Q6_K, whatever it runs on. Match score 10/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF files (opens in a new tab)
Q8_0 35.2 GB 10.7 GB — Won't run 76Great quality (A) · 76 of 100: how capable the model is at Q8_0, whatever it runs on. Match score 10/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF (opens in a new tab)
F16 64.4 GB 10.7 GB — Won't run 76Great quality (A) · 76 of 100: how capable the model is at F16, whatever it runs on. Match score 10/100 (quality, fit, speed and memory use) sets the ranking. GGUF · part 1 of 2 (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 M5 (16 GB)

Quick answers

How much memory does Qwen3-VL 30B-A3B Thinking need on the M5 16GB?

Even at Q2_K it needs about 14.7 GB; the M5 16GB has 10.7 GB usable.

What can the M5 16GB run instead?

Mellum2.1 Thinking (12B-A2.5B), K2 Horizon 7B and Gemma 4 12B run best on it; the page lists more, each with its speed.

What hardware can run Qwen3-VL 30B-A3B Thinking?

M1 Max 64GB, M4 Max 64GB and NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell 96GB 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.

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