Qwen3.5 122B-A10B on Mac Studio M5 Max 64 GB

125.086B (10B active) on 64 GB at 614 GB/s. Hardware details · Model details

CompatibilityDoes not fit
Fits
No
Calculated Requires more than 97% of usable memory. Needs a smaller quantization or more memory.
Recommended quantization
MLX 4-bit
Calculated mlx
Memory required
71.9 GB
Calculated of 54.4 GB usable — 132%
Max practical context
0
Calculated model supports 256K

Memory budget at 8K context

Model weights
68.1 GB Calculated
KV cache
0.8 GB Calculated
Runtime overhead
3.0 GB Estimated
Total required
71.9 GB Calculated
Usable memory
54.4 GB Assumption
Headroom
-17.5 GB Calculated
No quantization in our catalogue fits this machine.
Unified memory: weights, KV cache and the OS share the same 64 GB pool. We assume 85% is addressable by the GPU, which matches a headless machine with the wired-memory limit raised.
Mixture of experts: all 125.086B parameters must be resident in memory even though only ~10B are active per token. Memory follows total parameters; speed follows active parameters.
PerformanceEstimated0/10
Decode (generation)
Estimated calculated, not measured
Prefill (prompt)
Estimated
TTFT at 8K
~9.7–20.1 s
Estimated time to first token
Power while generating
118 W
Measured
No throughput figures for this pairing. We do not estimate performance for a model that cannot load: a tokens-per-second number for a configuration that will never run is noise, not data. The alternatives below are machines that can actually run Qwen3.5 122B-A10B.
How the estimate is calculated
  1. Decode: reading 10.0B active parameters at 4.50 bits/weight takes 10.45 ms at 614 GB/s x 88% achieved efficiency.
  2. MoE routing penalty of 15% applied: expert gathers are less bandwidth-efficient than a dense sweep.
  3. Prefill: 120 TFLOPS (FP16) x 1.69 calibrated against measured prefill on this platform x 22% assumed model-FLOPs utilisation, divided by 2 x 35.4B parameters per token.
  4. Prefill uses 35.4B effective parameters, not the 10B active in decode: a batch of hundreds of tokens routes across most of the expert pool.

  • MoE decode depends on how well the engine batches expert gathers; real results vary more than for dense models.
  • Prefill throughput is highly engine-dependent. Flash attention, batch size and quantized KV all move this number substantially, and for sparse mixture-of-experts models it is the least reliable figure we produce.
  • This is a calculated estimate, not a measurement. It assumes a single request, a short prompt, no speculative decoding and a warm model already resident in memory.

Estimator version estimator_v1. Stored with every estimated row so old estimates can be regenerated when the model improves.

This model at other quantizations on this machine
QuantizationWeightsTotal neededUtilisationFitMax context
MLX 4-bitrecommended68.1 GB71.9 GB132%Does not fit0
Q4_K_M72.7 GB76.7 GB141%Does not fit0
Q8_0126.3 GB131.8 GB242%Does not fit0
BF16233.0 GB241.7 GB444%Does not fit0
Cost of running Qwen3.5 122B-A10B on this machineUnited States (federal) · C corporation · 8h/day
Monthly economic cost
$37
Calculated after tax
Codex/Claude Code
$100/mo
≈ $100/mo · local is $63 less
Net cash at purchase
$3,512
Calculated VAT not reclaimable
Total over 5 years
$2,213
Calculated after tax, after resale
Cost per USD/1M tokens
Calculated

The $100 comparison uses the Codex Pro 5x / Claude Max 5x plans. A fixed planning conversion is used for USD. This compares monthly spend only: subscriptions have usage limits, local hardware has different capabilities and constraints, and taxes or regional pricing may change the charged amount. Prices checked 7 September 2026.

Monthly breakdown

Depreciation
2,459 over 5 years, straight-line to a 1,054 residual
$40.98
Electricity
5.3 kWh/month at 0.140/kWh
$0.74
Cost of capital
4.0%/yr on 2,283 average capital employed
$7.61
Monthly cost before tax$49.33
Electricity tax shield
Running costs are deductible business expenses
−$0.16
First-year expensing
§179 (100.0%)
−$12.29
Monthly economic cost after tax$36.88

Three different numbers, deliberately

Cash cost
$3,512
Money that leaves the bank account on day one, net of reclaimable VAT.
Accounting depreciation
$40.98/month
$2,459 written down over 5 years to a $1,054 residual.
After-tax economic cost
$36.88/month
Depreciation plus running costs plus cost of capital, less the tax those deductions save. This is the figure to compare between machines.
Assumptions and sources (verified 2026-09-07)
VAT rate
0% Official spec
VAT recoverable
0% Official spec
Federal C-corporation estimate at the flat 21% rate. Pass-through entities should use the sole-proprietor estimate as a rougher proxy.
Effective deduction rate
21.00% Calculated
Headline marginal rate 21.00%.
Depreciation
5 years, straight-line Assumption
Residual value
$1,054 (30%) Assumption
Extrapolated from the three-year curve.
Electricity
$0.140/kWh Assumption
Average power draw
30 W Calculated
Load 118 W for 20% of powered hours, idle 8 W for the rest — a machine that is on is not generating tokens the whole time.
Investment allowances
§179 100.0% Official spec
Worth $738 in total — first-year expensing that replaces later tax depreciation.
Cost of capital
$7.61/month Assumption
Federal planning estimate only, not tax advice. State and local income tax, sales/use tax and incentives are excluded. It assumes 100% business use, a Section 179 election, enough business income to use it, and that the full annual limit remains available.
Page quality score (why this page is or is not indexed)

6/13 marked noindex. Generated pages are gated so we do not ask a search engine to rank a page with nothing computed to say. The directive is emitted in the page head via the metadata API, not in the body, so it is authoritative.

  • Has a memory-fit calculation (+3)
  • Has a price (+2)
  • Has an ownership economics calculation (+2)
  • Well connected (18 internal links) (+1)
  • No benchmark or estimate
  • Model does not fit and there is no measurement to explain why it is worth knowing (-2)
  • Fails a hard requirement: an indexable page needs both a compatibility calculation and at least one benchmark or estimate.