Mac mini M6 · 24 GB
A compact current-generation Mac with 24 GB unified memory. Keep macOS, runtime, and KV-cache headroom separate from model weights.
Primary sourceQwen3.6 27B
The highest listed result may be a tight or offloaded fit. For daily use, prefer the first result marked Comfortable and keep context modest.
MLX LM
Native Apple silicon inference, experimentation and fine-tuning. Only for Apple silicon. Use an MLX-converted model and tune KV cache size for long contexts.
Open guideRepresentative open-weight models
Qwen3.6 27B
- Estimated memory
- ~18.5 GB
- Context
- 262K native
Devstral Small 2 24B
- Estimated memory
- ~18.5 GB
- Context
- 256K
gpt-oss-20b
- Estimated memory
- ~16 GB
- Context
- 128K
Qwen3 14B
- Estimated memory
- ~11.2 GB
- Context
- 32K+
Gemma 3 12B
- Estimated memory
- ~9.4 GB
- Context
- 128K
Qwen3 8B
- Estimated memory
- ~6.8 GB
- Context
- 32K+
Fit is based on estimated total model memory. Driver support, KV cache, multimodal projectors, concurrency, and desktop applications can all reduce available headroom. Current fit: Qwen3.6 27B (Tight), Devstral Small 2 24B (Tight), gpt-oss-20b (Tight), Qwen3 14B (Comfortable), Gemma 3 12B (Comfortable), Qwen3 8B (Comfortable).