Apple · unified memory

Mac mini M4 16GB

The Mac mini M4 16GB has 16GB of unified memory, roughly 12GB of it GPU-addressable, with 120 GB/s of bandwidth. The largest model that loads cleanly at a quality quant is Mistral-Nemo-Instruct-2407 (llama.cpp, 8K context).

Unified memory: 16GB shared between CPU and GPU; we count ~75% as GPU-addressable for model weights.

Unified memory: 16 GB
GPU-addressable: ~12 GB (75%)
Memory bandwidth: 120 GB/s
Backend: metal
Price (as configured): $799

Specs as of 2026-07-11 · source

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What a Mac mini M4 16GB can run

Every model we track, graded at its best clean-fit quant.

Model	Best-quant verdict · llama.cpp · 8K context
Qwen3-8B	Fits · B · Q6_Kusable
gemma-4-26B-A4B-it	Won't fitbeta
Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct	Fits · B · Q8_0painful
Qwen2.5-1.5B-Instruct	Fits · A+ · Q8_0interactive
Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct	Fits · A+ · Q8_0interactive
Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct	Fits · B · Q8_0painful
DeepSeek-R1	Won't fitbeta
Qwen3.5-9B	Fits · B · Q6_Kusablebeta
gpt-oss-20b	Won't fitbeta
Qwen3.6-35B-A3B	Won't fitbeta
Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct	Fits · A+ · Q8_0usable
Qwen3-32B	Won't fit
Qwen3.6-27B	Won't fitbeta
Qwen2.5-0.5B-Instruct	Fits · A+ · Q8_0interactive
Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3	Fits · B · Q8_0usable
gpt-oss-120b	Won't fitbeta
Qwen3-14B	Tight · C · Q4_K_Mpainful
Qwen3-30B-A3B	Won't fit
Qwen2.5-32B-Instruct	Won't fit
DeepSeek-V4-Flash	Won't fitbeta
Qwen2.5-14B-Instruct	Tight · C · Q4_K_Mpainful
Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct	Fits · A+ · Q8_0usable
gemma-3-4b-it	Fits · A+ · Q8_0usablebeta
gemma-3-12b-it	Tight · C · Q4_K_Musablebeta
Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct	Won't fit
Phi-3.5-mini-instruct	Fits · A+ · Q8_0usable
Phi-4	Tight · C · Q4_K_Mpainful
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B	Won't fit
gemma-3-27b-it	Won't fitbeta
Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct	Won't fit
Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct	Won't fit
gemma-2-2b-it	Fits · A+ · Q8_0interactivebeta
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B	Tight · C · Q4_K_Mpainful
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B	Fits · B · Q8_0painful
DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B	Fits · B · Q8_0painful
gemma-2-9b-it	Fits · B · Q6_Kusablebeta
Mistral-Nemo-Instruct-2407	Fits · B · Q4_K_Musable
QwQ-32B	Won't fit
Mistral-Small-24B-Instruct-2501	Won't fit
gemma-2-27b-it	Won't fitbeta

Verdicts computed from published specs and measured GGUF sizes — how the math works.