Apple silicon Macs for local LLMs

Why choose this family: Up to 512 GB of fast unified memory in a quiet box. MLX and llama.cpp run great.
The catch: Memory upgrades are expensive and cannot be added later.

In this family	Memory	Bandwidth	Largest popular model at 4-bit	Price
Mac Studio M5 Max	128 GB	614 GB/s	Qwen3.5 122B A10B	$2,499
Mac Studio M5 Ultra	512 GB	1.2 TB/s	Qwen3.5 397B A17B	$5,499
Mac mini M5 Pro	64 GB	307 GB/s	Qwen3.6 35B A3B	$1,699
Mac mini M6	32 GB	170 GB/s	Qwen3.6 27B	$899

Apple silicon

Largest popular model at 4-bit: Qwen3.5 122B A10B

128 GB at 614 GB/s: gpt-oss-120b and 122B MoE models at a good pace, almost silently.

from $2,499 (launch price)Highly recommended

Apple silicon

Largest popular model at 4-bit: Qwen3.5 397B A17B

Up to 512 GB at 1.2 TB/s: the only single box that holds DeepSeek R1 or Qwen3.5 397B at 4-bit.

from $5,499 (launch price)Recommended

Apple silicon

Largest popular model at 4-bit: Qwen3.6 35B A3B

Up to 64 GB at 307 GB/s in a quiet mini PC: 27–35B models at a comfortable pace.

from $1,699 (launch price)Recommended

Apple silicon

Largest popular model at 4-bit: Qwen3.6 27B

A silent, tiny always-on box for small models. Choose 32 GB if AI is the goal.

from $899 (launch price)Good budget option