Qwen3 235B A22B
Qwen3 235B A22B loads in 130 GB at Q4_K_M and is comfortable from 192 GB of memory, Macs included from the Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256GB. Below: the full memory math, the cheapest card that runs it well, and the fastest machine we track.
PARAMETERS
235B (22B active)
FORMAT
Q4_K_M
MIN MEMORY
192 GB
BEST FOR
Quality, Reasoning
Memory math
Weights (Q4_K_M)
130 GB
+ KV cache (16k)
~6.0 GB
Total at 16k
~136.0 GB
Comfortable from
192 GB
KV = fp16 estimate (q8_0 cache roughly halves it). "Comfortable" = weights + KV within the engine's tiered budget (~70-85% of memory).
Hardware snapshot
Cheapest GPU
—
no consumer fit
More Qwen models
Qwen3.7-PlusQwen2.5 0.5B InstructQwen3.5 0.8B InstructQwen2.5 1.5B InstructQwen3.5 2B InstructQwen2.5 3B InstructQwen3.5 4B InstructQwen2.5 7B InstructQwen2.5 Coder 7BQwen3 8BQwen3.5 9B InstructQwen2.5 14B InstructQwen2.5 Coder 14BQwen3 14BQwen3.5 27B InstructQwen3.6 27BQwen3.8 27BQwen3 30BQwen3 30B (Q8)Qwen3.5 35B-A3B InstructQwen3.6 35B-A3BQwen3-Next 80B-A3BQwen3.5 122B-A10B InstructQwen3.8-Flash-Next
Frequently asked questions
How much memory does Qwen3 235B A22B need?
130 GB for the Q4_K_M weights, plus ~6.0 GB of KV-cache at 16k context — about 136.0 GB total. Comfortable from 192 GB of VRAM or unified memory.
Does Qwen3 235B A22B run on a Mac?
Yes — from the Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256GB (~14 tok/s est.). Unified memory means the RAM budget is the only limit.
What is the cheapest GPU for Qwen3 235B A22B?
No tracked consumer GPU runs Qwen3 235B A22B comfortably.
Cite this page
ModelFit: Qwen3 235B A22B — specs, memory math and hardware verdicts. https://modelfit.io/models/qwen3-235b-a22b/ (dataset updated 2026-09-03, CC BY 4.0).