Can I run Qwen3-30B-A3B on a Mac with 36 GB?

Yes, with a GGUF version

The published weights are too big, but the Q5_K_M file from Qwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B-GGUF (21.7 GB) fits, with room for ≈ 23K tokens of context.

Full analysis of Qwen3-30B-A3B Everything that runs on Mac with 36 GB Get the Q5_K_M file on Hugging Face

ollama run hf.co/Qwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B-GGUF:Q5_K_M

Files and context on Mac with 36 GB

Each file of Qwen3-30B-A3B (and of GGUF versions the site has analyzed), and how much context fits next to it, with the context cache in 16-bit or 8-bit.

File	Size	On Mac with 36 GB	Context (16-bit)	Context (8-bit)
As published	61.1 GB	Doesn't fit	—	—
Q8_0Qwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B-GGUF	32.5 GB	Doesn't fit	—	—
Q6_KQwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B-GGUF	25.1 GB	Doesn't fit	—	—
Q5_K_MQwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B-GGUF	21.7 GB	Tight	23K	40K
Q5_0Qwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B-GGUF	21.1 GB	Tight	29K	40K
Q4_K_MQwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B-GGUF	18.6 GB	Fits	40K	40K

Qwen3-30B-A3B on other hardware

Popular models that run on Mac with 36 GB

Assumes 67% of the Mac's memory is usable (macOS's default limit for the GPU; it can be raised) and at least 4K tokens of context for one conversation, with the context cache in 16-bit unless noted. Fits leaves at least 20% of that memory for context; Tight leaves less.