Phi-3.5 MoE 42B-A6.6B on RTX 5090 workstation (1x 32 GB)

41.873B (6.6B active) on 32 GB at 1,792 GB/s. Hardware details · Model details

Marginal. Phi-3.5 MoE 42B-A6.6B fits on RTX 5090 workstation (1x 32 GB) at the recommended Q4_K_M configuration, requiring approximately 27.1 GB at 8K context. Practical context capacity is 16K.
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
27.1 GB
Calculated of 29.4 GB usable — 92%
Max practical context
16K
Calculated model supports 128K

Memory budget at 8K context

Model weights ⓘ
24.4 GB Calculated
KV cache ⓘ
1.0 GB Calculated
Runtime overhead ⓘ
1.7 GB Estimated
Total required
27.1 GB Calculated
Headroom ⓘ
2.4 GB Calculated
Only a borderline fit (92% of usable memory). Expect to run headless and keep the context short.
Discrete GPU: 32 GB of VRAM, of which we assume 92% is usable after driver and context overhead.
Mixture of experts: all 41.873B parameters must be resident in memory even though only ~6.6B are active per token. Memory follows total parameters; speed follows active parameters.
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
—
Estimated Q4_K_M; calculated range
Estimated prefill
—
Estimated Q4_K_M; calculated range
Estimated TTFT at 8K
~2.2–4.5 s
Estimated Q4_K_M; calculated range
Hardware load reference
640 W
Measured machine-level load; not this model run
No throughput figures for this configuration. We do not estimate performance for a model that cannot load.
How the estimate is calculated
  1. Decode: reading 6.6B active parameters at 4.85 bits/weight takes 2.82 ms at 1792 GB/s x 79% achieved efficiency.
  2. MoE routing penalty of 15% applied: expert gathers are less bandwidth-efficient than a dense sweep.
  3. Prefill: 210 TFLOPS (FP16) x 2 for native FP8 tensor cores x 0.71 calibrated against measured prefill on this platform x 32% assumed model-FLOPs utilisation, divided by 2 x 16.6B parameters per token.
  4. Prefill uses 16.6B effective parameters, not the 6.6B 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.

Submit a benchmarkSubmissions stay pending until reviewed.
This model at other quantizations on this machine
QuantizationResidentDiskTotal neededUtilisationFitMax context
Q4_K_Mrecommended24.4 GB24.4 GB27.1 GB92%Borderline16K
Q5_K_M28.6 GB28.6 GB31.4 GB107%Does not fit0
Q8_042.3 GB42.3 GB45.5 GB155%Does not fit0
BF1678.0 GB78.0 GB82.3 GB280%Does not fit0
Cost of running Phi-3.5 MoE 42B-A6.6B on this machineUnited States (federal) · C corporation · 8h/day
Monthly economic cost
$46
Calculated after tax
Codex/Claude Code
$100/mo
≈ $100/mo · local is $54 less
Net cash at purchase
$3,332
Calculated VAT not reclaimable
Total over 5 years
$2,731
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.

Purchase-price input: $3,332 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
2,832 over 5 years, straight-line to a 500 residual
$47.21
Electricity
32.4 kWh/month at 0.140/kWh
$4.53
Cost of capital
4.0%/yr on 1,916 average capital employed
$6.39
Monthly cost before tax$58.13
Electricity tax shield
Running costs are deductible business expenses
−$0.95
First-year expensing
§179 (100.0%)
−$11.66
Monthly economic cost after tax$45.51

Three different numbers, deliberately

Cash cost
$3,332
Money that leaves the bank account on day one, net of reclaimable VAT.
Accounting depreciation
$47.21/month
$2,832 written down over 5 years to a $500 residual.
After-tax economic cost
$45.51/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
$500 (15%) Assumption
Two GPU generations later, the card is worth a fraction of its list price.
Electricity
$0.140/kWh Assumption
Average power draw
184 W Calculated
Load 640 W for 20% of powered hours, idle 70 W for the rest — a machine that is on is not generating tokens the whole time.
Investment allowances
§179 100.0% Official spec
Worth $700 in total — first-year expensing that replaces later tax depreciation.
Cost of capital
$6.39/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.