DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen 7B
DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen 7B loads in 5.5 GB at Q4_K_M and is comfortable from 12 GB of memory, Macs included from the Mac Mini M6 16GB. Below: the full memory math, the cheapest card that runs it well, and the fastest machine we track.
Memory math
KV = fp16 estimate (q8_0 cache roughly halves it). "Comfortable" = weights + KV within the engine's tiered budget (~70-85% of memory).
Hardware snapshot
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Frequently asked questions
How much memory does DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen 7B need?
5.5 GB for the Q4_K_M weights, plus ~2.0 GB of KV-cache at 16k context — about 7.5 GB total. Comfortable from 12 GB of VRAM or unified memory.
Does DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen 7B run on a Mac?
Yes — from the Mac Mini M6 16GB (~32 tok/s est.). Unified memory means the RAM budget is the only limit.
What is the cheapest GPU for DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen 7B?
The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT is the cheapest tracked card that runs DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen 7B comfortably — ~83 tok/s est. at ~$550 used.
Cite this page
ModelFit: DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen 7B — specs, memory math and hardware verdicts. https://modelfit.io/models/deepseek-r1-distill-qwen-7b/ (dataset updated 2026-09-03, CC BY 4.0).