Qwen3 30B (Q8)
Qwen3 30B (Q8) loads in 30.3 GB at Q8_0 and decodes at the speed of its 3B active path, comfortably from 48 GB of memory — Macs included, starting at the MacBook Pro M5 Pro 48GB. Below is the memory math we ran for it, the cheapest card that fits, and the fastest machine we track.
How much memory does Qwen3 30B (Q8) need?
Qwen3 30B (Q8) is a 30B mixture-of-experts model (3B active per token) built for quality, coding. The weights alone take 30.3 GB at Q8_0; add context and the OS, and it belongs in the 48 GB memory class. Every number below comes from the ModelFit engine — speeds are estimates, labeled est., because we do not benchmark hardware ourselves.
KV = fp16 estimate (q8_0 cache roughly halves it). "Comfortable" = weights + KV within the engine's tiered budget (~70-85% of memory).
Which machines run Qwen3 30B (Q8)?
Verdicts come from the same engine that powers our fit checker — memory capacity first, bandwidth for speed. How we compute these numbers · Hugging Face model card
More Qwen models
Frequently asked questions
How much memory does Qwen3 30B (Q8) need?
30.3 GB for the Q8_0 weights, plus ~4.0 GB of KV-cache at 16k context — about 34.3 GB total. Comfortable from 48 GB of VRAM or unified memory.
Does Qwen3 30B (Q8) run on a Mac?
Yes — from the MacBook Pro M5 Pro 48GB (~23 tok/s est.). Unified memory means the RAM budget is the only limit.
What is the cheapest GPU for Qwen3 30B (Q8)?
The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 (Strix Halo) is the cheapest tracked card that runs Qwen3 30B (Q8) comfortably — ~16 tok/s est. at ~$3,847 used (as of 2026-07-31).
Cite this page
ModelFit: Qwen3 30B (Q8) — specs, memory math and hardware verdicts. https://modelfit.io/models/qwen3-30b-a3b/ (dataset updated 2026-09-03, CC BY 4.0).