Can MacBook Pro M3 Max 128 GB run DeepSeek-V4-Flash (284B-A13B)?
128 GB unified · 400 GB/s memory bandwidth · DeepSeek-V4-Flash (284B-A13B) has 284B parameters (13B active per token).
Short answer
It loads, but it's borderline even for chat.
Best quantization for chat: 3-bit (117 GB of weights) on LM Studio. Generation: 30–40 tok/s, leaving about 0.0 GB free for your other apps.
How it rates for each workload
Same model and machine, different jobs. Agents and long documents send far bigger prompts than chat, so they need much more speed and memory.
| Workload | Verdict | Quant | Generation | First reply | Context | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chatwith Open WebUI | Borderline | 3-bit | 30–40 tok/s | ≈3 s | 8K | Details |
| Coding questionswith Continue | Does Not Fit | — | — | — | — | Details |
| Coding in a repositorywith Aider | Does Not Fit | — | — | — | — | Details |
| Agentic codingwith OpenCode | Does Not Fit | — | — | — | — | Details |
| Long documents (64K)with Open WebUI | Does Not Fit | — | — | — | — | Details |
Speeds are estimates calibrated against measured benchmarks on similar hardware. “First reply” is the time to read the workload’s opening prompt. How we calculate
Get it running
Copy-paste commands for the 3-bit build with a 8K context. Ollama and llama.cpp download the file straight from Hugging Face.
ollama run hf.co/unsloth/DeepSeek-V4-Flash-GGUF:UD-Q3_K_XL
This build is split into 4 files, which Ollama can't import from Hugging Face. Use llama.cpp or LM Studio instead.
Other models for MacBook Pro M3 Max 128 GB
The best-rated models for chat on this machine.
- gpt-oss-120b65–85 tok/sExcellent
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3B75–100 tok/sExcellent
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct70–100 tok/sExcellent
- Gemma 4 26B-A4B55–80 tok/sExcellent
- Qwen3.5 35B-A3B75–100 tok/sExcellent
- LFM2.5 24B-A2B140–190 tok/sExcellent
Cheapest machines for DeepSeek-V4-Flash (284B-A13B)
Hardware rated comfortable or better for chat, lowest price first.
- Mac Studio M5 Ultra 256 GB$6,299 · 50–80 tok/sExcellent
- Mac Studio M3 Ultra 256 GB$6,299 · 35–45 tok/sExcellent
- Mac Studio M2 Ultra 192 GB$6,599 · 35–45 tok/sComfortable
- Mac Studio M5 Ultra 512 GB$7,099 · 50–80 tok/sExcellent
- Mac Studio M3 Ultra 512 GB$7,099 · 35–45 tok/sExcellent
- Mac Pro M2 Ultra 192 GB$8,599 · 35–45 tok/sComfortable
Different tool, context size or workload?
These pages use typical settings. The full check models your exact setup.