DeepSeek-R1-Distill 32B on Quad RTX 5090 workstation (4x 32 GB)
32.764B on 128 GB at 7,168 GB/s. Hardware details · Model details
Yes. DeepSeek-R1-Distill 32B fits on Quad RTX 5090 workstation (4x 32 GB) at the recommended
Q8_0 configuration, requiring approximately 38.3 GB at 8K context. Practical context capacity is 128K. Expected decode for the recommended configuration is ~65.3–94 t/s. EstimatedCompatibilityComfortable
Calculated fit
Yes
Calculated Uses under 80% of usable memory. Room for a long context and other work.
Recommended quantization
Q8_0
Calculated gguf
Memory required
38.3 GB
Calculated of 112.6 GB usable — 34%
Max practical context
128K
Calculated model supports 128K
Memory budget at 8K context
Model weights ⓘ
33.1 GB Calculated
KV cache ⓘ
2.0 GB Calculated
Runtime overhead ⓘ
3.2 GB Estimated
Total required
38.3 GB Calculated
Headroom ⓘ
74.4 GB Calculated
Highest-precision quantization that leaves headroom: uses 34% of usable memory at 8K context.
4 GPUs providing 128 GB aggregate VRAM. Assumes tensor- or layer-parallel sharding; each GPU carries its own context and communication buffers.
Multi-GPU throughput depends heavily on interconnect. Without NVLink or NVSwitch, tensor parallelism over PCIe adds latency that partially offsets the extra bandwidth.
Performance
Estimated performance · recommended Q8_0
Decode, prefill and TTFT below are estimates for Q8_0. We do not have a comparable Q8_0 measurement on this machine.
Estimated decode
~65.3–94 t/s
Estimated Q8_0; calculated range
Estimated prefill
~3060–6350 t/s
Estimated Q8_0; calculated range
Estimated TTFT at 8K
~1.4–2.8 s
Estimated Q8_0; calculated range
Hardware load reference
2250 W
Measured machine-level load; not this model run
How the estimate is calculated
- Multi-GPU: 1792 GB/s per card, with each additional card contributing 40% of its bandwidth — 3942 GB/s effective, not the 7168 GB/s aggregate. Cross-GPU collectives use PCIe rather than a dedicated GPU fabric.
- Decode: reading 32.8B active parameters at 8.50 bits/weight takes 11.15 ms at 3942 GB/s x 79% achieved efficiency.
- Prefill: 838 TFLOPS (FP16) x 2 for native FP8 tensor cores x 0.71 calibrated against measured prefill on this platform x 26% assumed model-FLOPs utilisation, divided by 2 x 32.8B parameters per token.
- 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.
Submit a benchmarkSubmissions stay pending until reviewed.
This model at other quantizations on this machine
| Quantization | Resident | Disk | Total needed | Utilisation | Fit | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Q4_K_M | 19.1 GB | 19.1 GB | 23.8 GB | 21% | Comfortable | 128K |
Q5_K_M | 22.4 GB | 22.4 GB | 27.2 GB | 24% | Comfortable | 128K |
Q8_0recommended | 33.1 GB | 33.1 GB | 38.3 GB | 34% | Comfortable | 128K |
BF16 | 61.0 GB | 61.0 GB | 67.1 GB | 60% | Comfortable | 128K |
Cost of running DeepSeek-R1-Distill 32B on this machineUnited States (federal) · C corporation · 8h/day
Monthly economic cost
$170
Calculated after tax
Codex/Claude Code
$100/mo
≈ $100/mo · local is $70 more
Net cash at purchase
$12,611
Calculated VAT not reclaimable
Total over 5 years
$10,224
Calculated after tax, after resale
Cost per USD/1M tokens
$16.88
Calculated 10.1M tokens/month
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.
Purchase-price input: $12,611 in United States (federal), tax/VAT excluded · estimated · NL retail (system build) (converted catalogue estimate). This is the localized purchase input; the after-tax economic cost is calculated separately below.
Monthly breakdown
| Depreciation 10,719 over 5 years, straight-line to a 1,892 residual | $178.65 |
| Electricity 106.0 kWh/month at 0.140/kWh | $14.83 |
| Cost of capital 4.0%/yr on 7,251 average capital employed | $24.17 |
| Monthly cost before tax | $217.65 |
| Electricity tax shield Running costs are deductible business expenses | −$3.11 |
| First-year expensing §179 (100.0%) | −$44.14 |
| Monthly economic cost after tax | $170.40 |
Three different numbers, deliberately
Cash cost
$12,611
Money that leaves the bank account on day one, net of reclaimable VAT.
Accounting depreciation
$178.65/month
$10,719 written down over 5 years to a $1,892 residual.
After-tax economic cost
$170.40/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
$1,892 (15%) Assumption
Two GPU generations later, the card is worth a fraction of its list price.
Electricity
$0.140/kWh Assumption
Average power draw
602 W Calculated
Load 2250 W for 20% of powered hours, idle 190 W for the rest — a machine that is on is not generating tokens the whole time.
Investment allowances
§179 100.0% Official spec
Worth $2,648 in total — first-year expensing that replaces later tax depreciation.
Cost of capital
$24.17/month Assumption
- VAT rate: No US federal VAT · verified 2026-09-07
- Marginal tax rate: IRS Publication 542 — Corporations · verified 2026-09-07
- VAT recoverable fraction: site assumption · verified 2026-09-07
- Useful life: IRS Publication 946 — How To Depreciate Property · verified 2026-09-07
- Electricity price: Site assumption · verified 2026-09-07
Assumes the machine generates tokens 20% of its 176 powered hours per month. Cost per token scales inversely with this number — halve the utilisation and the cost per token doubles.
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.
Efficiency metrics
Decode per $1,000 spent
6.3 t/s
Calculated purchase price only
Decode per $100/month
46.8 t/s
Calculated after-tax ownership cost
Tokens per joule
0.13
Calculated same as tokens/s per watt
USD per 1M output tokens
$16.88
Calculated at 20% utilisation
Local versus hosted APIs
| Hosted model | USD/1M output | Break-even | API at your volume | Verdict | Comparison type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3.8 Flash Alibaba Cloud | $0.42 | 110.7M/mo | $16 | API cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek-V4.1 Flash DeepSeek | $0.60 | 94.7M/mo | $18 | API cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek-V4 Pro DeepSeek | $1.98 | 23.5M/mo | $73 | API cheaper | Different model |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro (Together) Together AI | $4.40 | 8.0M/mo | $214 | Local cheaper | Different model |
| GLM-5.3 Z.ai | $4.40 | 10.9M/mo | $157 | About equal | Different model |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 Anthropic | $5.00 | 13.1M/mo | $131 | API cheaper | Different model |
Different-model comparison: the hosted model is not the model you would run locally. Treat this as a workload-quality trade-off, not a direct economic equivalence — the frontier model may complete a task in fewer tokens, or complete tasks the local model cannot. Break-even is the monthly output volume at which API spend equals the $170/month economic cost of owning this machine, assuming 8 input tokens per output token. Hosted prices are published in USD. This table is the canonical US default.
DeepSeek-R1-Distill 32B on other hardware
| Hardware | Decode | Price | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA DGX H200 (8x H200, 1,128 GB) | ~307–441 t/s | $359,430 * | Comfortable |
| Lenovo ThinkStation PX (4x RTX PRO 6000, 384 GB) | ~57–82 t/s | $58,553 * | Comfortable |
| RTX 5090 workstation (1x 32 GB) | ~55.4–79.7 t/s | $3,332 * | Comfortable |
| Dual RTX 5090 workstation (2x 32 GB) | ~43.3–62.3 t/s | $5,854 * | Comfortable |
| Dell Precision 7960 Rack (2x RTX PRO 6000, 192 GB) | ~39.7–57.1 t/s | $36,663 * | Comfortable |
| Dual used RTX 4090 workstation (48 GB) | ~36.3–52.3 t/s | $3,692 * | Comfortable |
Nearest alternatives to the Quad RTX 5090 workstation (4x 32 GB)
DeepSeek-R1-Distill 32B on Dual RTX 5090 workstation (2x 32 GB)64 GBDeepSeek-R1-Distill 32B on RTX 5090 workstation (1x 32 GB)32 GBDeepSeek-R1-Distill 32B on RTX PRO 6000 Max-Q workstation (96 GB, 300 W)96 GBDeepSeek-R1-Distill 32B on RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell workstation (96 GB)96 GBDeepSeek-R1-Distill 32B on Dual used RTX 4090 workstation (48 GB)48 GB
Compare Quad RTX 5090 workstation (4x 32 GB) against Dual RTX 5090 workstation (2x 32 GB) →
Compare Quad RTX 5090 workstation (4x 32 GB) against Dual RTX 5090 workstation (2x 32 GB) →