Can the Mac Mini M4 run Gemma 4 31B?
No. Gemma 4 31B needs about 20.8 GB at Q4_K_M (weights plus 1.8 GB runtime overhead), and the Mac Mini M4 has 16 GB, so it won't fit without offloading layers to system RAM, which is far slower.
Every quantization
Gemma 4 31B (32.7B) on 16 GB
| Quant | Weights | Needs | Fit | Est. speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M | 19 GB | 20.8 GB | Too big | - |
| Q5_K_M | 23 GB | 24.8 GB | Too big | - |
| Q8_0 | 35 GB | 36.8 GB | Too big | - |
| FP16 | 65 GB | 66.8 GB | Too big | - |
Estimates. Needs = weights + 1.8 GB for KV cache and runtime at modest context. Speed is single-stream decode scaled from the Mac Mini M4's 120 GB/s bandwidth (Estimated from memory bandwidth (llama.cpp decode)). Long contexts need more memory and run slower.
What to do instead
Two ways forward
Cheapest cards that run it
- NVIDIA Tesla P40 - 24 GB, ~$159
- NVIDIA RTX 3090 - 24 GB, ~$750
- AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX - 24 GB, ~$849
- NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti - 24 GB, ~$899
Models that fit the Mac Mini M4
- Qwen2.5-Coder-14B-Instruct - 14.8B, 9 GB at Q4
- Qwen3 14B - 14B, 8 GB at Q4
- Phi-4 - 14B, 8.5 GB at Q4
- Gemma 4 12B - 12B, 7 GB at Q4
Compare
Same model, other hardware - and other models on this card
Gemma 4 31B on other hardware
- RTX 5090~54 tok/s
- RTX 5090 D~54 tok/s
- RTX 6000D~47 tok/s
- RTX 4090~33 tok/s
- RTX 3090~29 tok/s
- Radeon RX 7900 XTX~29 tok/s
- MacBook Pro 16" M4 Max~16 tok/s
- Arc Pro B60~14 tok/s
Also runs on the Mac Mini M4
- Qwen2.5-Coder-14B-Instruct~7.6 tok/s
- Qwen3 14B~8.6 tok/s
- Phi-4~8.1 tok/s
- Gemma 4 12B~9.8 tok/s
- Qwen3.5 9B~11 tok/s
- Llama 3.1 8B~12 tok/s
- Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2~17 tok/s
- Qwen3.5 4B~23 tok/s
Frequently asked
Quick answers
Can the Apple Mac Mini M4 run Gemma 4 31B?
No. Gemma 4 31B needs about 20.8 GB at Q4_K_M (weights plus 1.8 GB runtime overhead), and the Mac Mini M4 has 16 GB, so it won't fit without offloading layers to system RAM, which is far slower.
How much VRAM does Gemma 4 31B need?
About 19 GB of weights at Q4_K_M, 35 GB at Q8_0 and 65 GB at FP16. Add roughly 1.8 GB for the KV cache and runtime at modest context lengths.
How fast is Gemma 4 31B on the Mac Mini M4?
It doesn't fit in the Mac Mini M4's memory, so speed depends on how many layers you offload to system RAM - typically single-digit tokens per second or lower.