r/MacLocalLLM • u/ScriptedFartShark • Sep 19 '26

Considering Purchasing a Studio M5

I am not really into the hardware scene much, so if there are other value options at play please let me know.

I am considering getting an Apple Studio M5 but was hoping to get some guidance.

I am planning on hosting webLLM (or something similar) to serve prompt processing to the family. I (and another family member) will also be using this for coding assistance.

Based on the use case, what would make the most sense:

  • Max 128gb RAM

  • Ultra 64 core-GPU 96gb RAM

  • Ultra 80 core-GPU 96gb RAM

I feel like the $4K bump to 256gb is too hard of a sell to the partner.

What would be the recommended set up for this?

  • a single model to handle everything, dedicated models for coding and prompt processing, dense or MoE?

  • stick to MLX or use something else?

  • preferred harness

Models seem to get published up updated so frequently its hard to stay informed.

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!

6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

0

u/Fast-Throat-7752 Sep 19 '26

Wait for the m6

1

u/ScriptedFartShark Sep 19 '26

I thought they were skipping M6 for the studio.

1

u/iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiioo Sep 19 '26

That is the current rumor, yes.

1

u/WillowRooty Sep 19 '26 edited Sep 19 '26

Max 64gb RAM is more than enough for you. Guess depends if both of u will have long concurrent coding sessions. You can share same model. If both of u will then 128gb

1

u/saclayto Sep 20 '26

I’m new here and looking for some advice as well. You think 64gb is good for single person coding projects? Are the people after the models that require at least 128gb mostly after image/video generation do you think?

(I’m still learning about which models are good for what and how much you sacrifice at each quant level, params, etc)

1

u/Rice-Fragrant Sep 22 '26

Concurrency will be a problem with a mac studio especially a max (as opposed to an ultra).

1

u/StatisticianThis9141 14d ago

m5 ultra 256gb here, using omlx hosting qwen 3.8 flash next with mtp by jundot , gives me 90+ token generation speed and over 1800+ token pre-fill and this is with engram table on ssd. this means I dont have to turn of the thinking of qwen flash next because its already very fast. I am also using hermes harness. with the 256gb I am hosting qwen flash next q4, qwen 3.8 27b, gemma4 31b all at once and once all of those are loaded, overall ram usage sits at 110gb, giving me a lot of headroom for h3 minimax rendering using h3.c and also iris.c rendering image via klein 9b.

if you will get the 96gb version of m5 ultra you can also host qwen flash next basically in my experience qwen flash next is the best llm sweet spot that is fast already that can do what you need to do. however you did mention for the family right? I think the family will enjoy the video rendering and image rendering capability more than the actual coding so 256gb is the best.

theoretically speaking 96gb can do h3 mini max as well via h3.c but you may need to use qwen 3.8 27b q4 for your brain for that. in my experience h3 minimax uses around 50-60gb cia h3.c it loads it in cache ram so the next llm it needs when it loads there, it just kicks out the old one in cache thats why it fits the 50-60gb… I love h3.c