modelrigs

Gemma 3 27B on RTX 3090 workstation (Ryzen 9 7950X, 64 GB)

27.432B on 24 GB at 936 GB/s. Hardware details · Model details

Run locally →
Marginal. Gemma 3 27B fits on RTX 3090 workstation (Ryzen 9 7950X, 64 GB) at the recommended Q4_K_M configuration, requiring approximately 21.3 GB at 8K context. Practical context capacity is 8K. Expected decode for the recommended configuration is ~33.5–48.2 t/s. Estimated
CompatibilityBorderline
Calculated fit
Yes
Calculated Uses 90-97% of usable memory. Likely to load but fragile under load or long context.
Recommended quantization
Q4_K_M
Calculated gguf
Memory required
21.3 GB
Calculated of 22.1 GB usable — 96%
Max practical context
8K
Calculated model supports 128K

Memory budget at 8K context

Model weights ⓘ
16.0 GB Calculated
KV cache ⓘ
3.9 GB Calculated
Runtime overhead ⓘ
1.5 GB Estimated
Total required
21.3 GB Calculated
Headroom ⓘ
0.8 GB Calculated
Only a borderline fit (96% of usable memory). Expect to run headless and keep the context short.
Discrete GPU: 24 GB of VRAM, of which we assume 92% is usable after driver and context overhead.
Borderline fit. It may load, but you will have little room for a longer context, a second process, or a desktop session.
Performance

Estimated performance · recommended Q4_K_M

Decode, prefill and TTFT below are estimates for Q4_K_M. We do not have a comparable Q4_K_M measurement on this machine.

Estimated decode
~33.5–48.2 t/s
Estimated Q4_K_M; calculated range
Estimated prefill
~538–1120 t/s
Estimated Q4_K_M; calculated range
Estimated TTFT at 8K
~7.4–15.3 s
Estimated Q4_K_M; calculated range
Hardware load reference
600 W
Official spec hardware TDP; not this model run
How the estimate is calculated
  1. Decode: reading 27.4B active parameters at 4.85 bits/weight takes 23.69 ms at 936 GB/s x 75% achieved efficiency.
  2. Prefill: 142 TFLOPS (FP16) x 32% assumed model-FLOPs utilisation, divided by 2 x 27.4B 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
QuantizationResidentDiskTotal neededUtilisationFitMax context
Q4_K_Mrecommended16.0 GB16.0 GB21.3 GB96%Borderline8K
Q5_K_M18.7 GB18.7 GB24.2 GB109%Does not fit2K
Q8_027.7 GB27.7 GB33.4 GB151%Does not fit0
BF1651.1 GB51.1 GB57.5 GB260%Does not fit0
Cost of running Gemma 3 27B on this machineUnited States (federal) · C corporation · 8h/day
Monthly economic cost
$26
Calculated after tax
Codex/Claude Code
$100/mo
≈ $100/mo · local is $74 less
Net cash at purchase
$1,981
Calculated VAT not reclaimable
Total over 5 years
$1,578
Calculated after tax, after resale
Cost per USD/1M tokens
$5.08
Calculated 5.2M 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: $1,981 in United States (federal), tax/VAT excluded · estimated · Used market exact-match reference (converted catalogue estimate). This is the localized purchase input; the after-tax economic cost is calculated separately below.

Monthly breakdown

Depreciation
1,545 over 5 years, straight-line to a 436 residual
$25.75
Electricity
31.3 kWh/month at 0.140/kWh
$4.38
Cost of capital
4.0%/yr on 1,208 average capital employed
$4.03
Monthly cost before tax$34.16
Electricity tax shield
Running costs are deductible business expenses
−$0.92
First-year expensing
§179 (100.0%)
−$6.93
Monthly economic cost after tax$26.30

Three different numbers, deliberately

Cash cost
$1,981
Money that leaves the bank account on day one, net of reclaimable VAT.
Accounting depreciation
$25.75/month
$1,545 written down over 5 years to a $436 residual.
After-tax economic cost
$26.30/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
$436 (22%) Assumption
Extrapolated.
Electricity
$0.140/kWh Assumption
Average power draw
178 W Calculated
Load 600 W for 20% of powered hours, idle 72 W for the rest — a machine that is on is not generating tokens the whole time.
Investment allowances
§179 100.0% Official spec
Worth $416 in total — first-year expensing that replaces later tax depreciation.
Cost of capital
$4.03/month Assumption
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
20.6 t/s
Calculated purchase price only
Decode per $100/month
155.2 t/s
Calculated after-tax ownership cost
Tokens per joule
0.23
Calculated same as tokens/s per watt
USD per 1M output tokens
$5.08
Calculated at 20% utilisation
Local versus hosted APIs
Hosted modelUSD/1M outputBreak-evenAPI at your volumeVerdictComparison type
Qwen3.8 Flash
Alibaba Cloud
$0.4217.1M/mo$8API cheaperDifferent model
DeepSeek-V4.1 Flash
DeepSeek
$0.6014.6M/mo$9API cheaperDifferent model
DeepSeek-V4 Pro
DeepSeek
$1.983.6M/mo$38Local cheaperDifferent model
DeepSeek V4 Pro (Together)
Together AI
$4.401.2M/mo$110Local cheaperDifferent model
GLM-5.3
Z.ai
$4.401.7M/mo$81Local cheaperDifferent model
Claude Haiku 4.5
Anthropic
$5.002.0M/mo$67Local cheaperDifferent 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 $26/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.
Gemma 3 27B on other hardware
HardwareDecodePriceFit
NVIDIA DGX H200 (8x H200, 1,128 GB)~332–478 t/s$359,430 *Comfortable
Quad RTX 5090 workstation (4x 32 GB)~76.4–110 t/s$12,611 *Comfortable
Lenovo ThinkStation PX (4x RTX PRO 6000, 384 GB)~66.8–96.2 t/s$58,553 *Comfortable
RTX 5090 workstation (1x 32 GB)~65.5–94.2 t/s$3,332 *Comfortable
Dual RTX 5090 workstation (2x 32 GB)~51–73.4 t/s$5,854 *Comfortable
Dell Precision 7960 Rack (2x RTX PRO 6000, 192 GB)~46.8–67.3 t/s$36,663 *Comfortable
Nearest alternatives to the RTX 3090 workstation (Ryzen 9 7950X, 64 GB)
Gemma 3 27B on Used RTX 4090 workstation (24 GB)24 GBGemma 3 27B on RTX 5090 workstation (1x 32 GB)32 GBGemma 3 27B on Dual used RTX 4090 workstation (48 GB)48 GBGemma 3 27B on Radeon AI PRO R9700 workstation (32 GB)32 GBGemma 3 27B on Dual RTX 5090 workstation (2x 32 GB)64 GB
Compare RTX 3090 workstation (Ryzen 9 7950X, 64 GB) against Used RTX 4090 workstation (24 GB) →