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Voltarum Local LLM Hardware Guide

Hardware to run Qwen3.5 397B A17B

Qwen's flagship. At 4-bit it needs a 256 GB or 512 GB Mac Studio.

Developer
Alibaba (Qwen)
Parameters
403B (active 17B)
Max context
256K tokens
Licence
Apache 2.0

Model card on Hugging FaceGGUF files

Memory needed

Factual data

Weights plus context cache plus about 1.5 GB of runtime buffers, by quantisation and context length.

Quantisation8K tokens32K tokens128K tokens
Q4_K_M246 GB247 GB250 GB
Q8_0423 GB424 GB427 GB
FP16809 GB809 GB812 GB

Hardware that runs it

Estimate

1 platforms can run Qwen3.5 397B A17B at Q4_K_M with a 32K-token context. Needs about 247 GB.

Fastest that runs it

Model weightsContext cache (KV)RuntimeUsable limit (colour = verdict)

RunsRuns comfortably (1)

PlatformSmallest configurationMemorySpeed ceilingPrice from
Mac Studio M5 Ultra512 GB
247 GB / 384 GB
≤ 117 tok/s—

Partly in system RAMOnly with part of the model in system RAM (20)

PlatformSmallest configurationMemorySpeed ceilingPrice from
RTX PRO 600096 GB
247 GB / 96 GB
—$8,565
RTX PRO 500048 GB
247 GB / 48 GB
—$4,500
Radeon AI PRO R970032 GB
247 GB / 32 GB
—$1,550
Arc Pro B7032 GB
247 GB / 32 GB
—$1,268
RTX 509032 GB
247 GB / 32 GB
—$4,329
RTX PRO 450032 GB
247 GB / 32 GB
—$2,500
RX 7900 XTX24 GB
247 GB / 24 GB
—$1,358
Arc Pro B6024 GB
247 GB / 24 GB
—$599
RTX 309024 GB
247 GB / 24 GB
—$1,340
RTX 409024 GB
247 GB / 24 GB
—$1,599
RTX PRO 400024 GB
247 GB / 24 GB
—$1,500
RX 9060 XT 16 GB16 GB
247 GB / 16 GB
—$349
RX 9070 XT16 GB
247 GB / 16 GB
—$759
Arc Pro B5016 GB
247 GB / 16 GB
—$349
RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB16 GB
247 GB / 16 GB
—$789
RTX 5070 Ti16 GB
247 GB / 16 GB
—$1,190
RTX 508016 GB
247 GB / 16 GB
—$1,830
Arc B58012 GB
247 GB / 12 GB
—$249
RTX 3060 12 GB12 GB
247 GB / 12 GB
—$329
RTX 507012 GB
247 GB / 12 GB
—$1,010

Not enough memoryNot enough memory (10)

PlatformSmallest configurationMemorySpeed ceilingPrice from
Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495192 GB
247 GB / 159 GB
—$7,399
Ryzen AI Max+ 395128 GB
247 GB / 115 GB
—$2,200
Mac Studio M5 Max128 GB
247 GB / 96 GB
—$2,499
Jetson AGX Thor128 GB
247 GB / 115 GB
—$5,499
DGX Spark / GB10128 GB
247 GB / 115 GB
—$5,000
Ryzen AI 9 HX 37096 GB
247 GB / 82 GB
——
Mac mini M5 Pro64 GB
247 GB / 48 GB
—$1,699
Jetson AGX Orin 64GB64 GB
247 GB / 58 GB
—$1,999
Mac mini M632 GB
247 GB / 21 GB
—$899
Jetson Orin Nano Super8 GB
247 GB / 6 GB
—$399

Not supportedNot supported (2)

PlatformSmallest configurationMemorySpeed ceilingPrice from
RK3588 (Orange Pi 5 Plus and others)32 GB———
Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 28 GB——$200

Theoretical maximum for generating text: memory bandwidth divided by the bytes read per token. Real runs usually reach about half to three quarters of it.