My system runs at 100W TDP though. That is maybe 140W at the power outlet, incl. monitor and everything.
This is also the dense 27B model at Q8. But yeah, it is not terribly fast. I think the best use case is on MoE models. GPT-OSS-120B runs on it for example and at 50T/s speed is not a n issue anymore either. (I could get it to run even on just 64GB but the new llama.cpp might need a tiny bit more memory which pushed it just across the limit. yeah I know, for seriously using it you’d need the 128GB version)
Yes I think Strix Halo makes sense when low power use is a requirement. I built a custom fanless Strix Halo system for the fun of it and I guess there aren’t too many out there running Gemma 4 31B Q8 without a single fan, anywhere.
And for MoE models that need 60-80GB + context it is perfect. Those are decently fast then as well.
PS: If VRAM is all you care about the maxed out Mac Studio is fascinating. 512GB unified memory for around 10K EUR (pre crazy bubble prices) That should be able to run pretty large MoE models but dense models of that size would probably run glacially.
i’m not buying any hardware for the forseeable future :P it’s all just wishful thinking at the moment. but unified memory architectureis probably going to become more common so maybe in five years when some new motherboard standard becomes the norm…
My system runs at 100W TDP though. That is maybe 140W at the power outlet, incl. monitor and everything.
This is also the dense 27B model at Q8. But yeah, it is not terribly fast. I think the best use case is on MoE models. GPT-OSS-120B runs on it for example and at 50T/s speed is not a n issue anymore either. (I could get it to run even on just 64GB but the new llama.cpp might need a tiny bit more memory which pushed it just across the limit. yeah I know, for seriously using it you’d need the 128GB version)
that’s fair, i’m at like 7x the power. the gpu alone easily pulls 350-400W and the rest of the system isn’t exactly running lean either.
…man now i really want more vram.
Yes I think Strix Halo makes sense when low power use is a requirement. I built a custom fanless Strix Halo system for the fun of it and I guess there aren’t too many out there running Gemma 4 31B Q8 without a single fan, anywhere.
And for MoE models that need 60-80GB + context it is perfect. Those are decently fast then as well.
PS: If VRAM is all you care about the maxed out Mac Studio is fascinating. 512GB unified memory for around 10K EUR (pre crazy bubble prices) That should be able to run pretty large MoE models but dense models of that size would probably run glacially.
i’m not buying any hardware for the forseeable future :P it’s all just wishful thinking at the moment. but unified memory architectureis probably going to become more common so maybe in five years when some new motherboard standard becomes the norm…
I fully understand. ;) Buying hardware now means you’d be either crazy or desperate.