DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B: VRAM requirements by quant
Key facts
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B needs about 11.4 GB at standard quality (Q4, estimate).
Checked . unsloth Q4_K_M GGUF.
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B is a mid-size AI model you can download and run on your own computer. It needs about 11 GB of memory at standard quality.
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Memory needed
About 11 GB
At standard quality, with room for a conversation of about 12 pages.
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Machines that run DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B
Each of these holds the whole model in memory. Speed is in tokens per second (tok/s); from about 8 it keeps up with your reading.
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Mac mini M6 32GB
32 GB shared memory
Slow~7.7 tok/s$1,416€1,530estimate
Machine details →Mac Studio M4 Max 36GB
36 GB shared memory · second-hand
Comfortable~18.5 tok/s$2,116€1,890usedunverified
Machine details →Used PC with RTX 3090 24GB
24 GB graphics memory · second-hand
Fast~68 tok/s$2,413€2,346estimateused parts
Machine details →The buttons look up the graphics card, the part of this PC worth comparing.
PC with Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB
24 GB graphics memory · second-hand
Fast~67 tok/s$2,422€2,354estimateused parts
Machine details →The buttons look up the graphics card, the part of this PC worth comparing.
PC with RTX 5090 32GB
32 GB graphics memory
Fast~128 tok/s$7,834€8,467estimate
Machine details →The buttons look up the graphics card, the part of this PC worth comparing.
Where our price is for a used card or Mac, these shops mostly sell new ones, so their price can be higher.
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About these prices
Each price is the amount we last wrote down for that machine, with its date on the machine page. "Estimate" is our own figure: for a complete PC we add our estimate for the other parts to the graphics card price, and some Mac prices are estimates, not a checked shop listing. "Used" is a second-hand price. "Unverified" means we have no checked shop listing for that exact amount. The shop buttons open a search for that machine at each shop, so you see today's price there. Prices excl. shipping unless marked. Euro prices incl. VAT where the seller charges it. Dollar prices are converted from our euro prices without the 21% EU VAT, before US sales tax.
Or rent one by the hour: RTX A6000 at Vast.ai holds it, for $0.40 an hour (median of live offers, 21 Oct 2026). Compare GPU cloud prices
Speeds and memory are our estimate from the hardware specs, not a measured test. Prices are dated and may change. How we calculate
Memory at each quality level
A lower quality level makes the model smaller, so it fits on a smaller machine. Standard (Q4) is what most people run.
| Quality | Memory needed |
|---|---|
| Q4 · standard (smallest that keeps quality) | 11.4 GB |
| Q5 · a bit sharper, a bit bigger | 12.9 GB |
| Q8 · near full quality, almost twice Q4 | 18.2 GB |
| FP16 · full quality, over three times Q4 | 32.0 GB |
With a conversation of 8,192 tokens · about 12 pages of text.
Sources and method
At standard quality: 9.0 GB for the model itself (a measured file), 1.6 GB for a conversation of 8,192 tokens, and 0.8 GB for the software.
Size source: huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B. The published size is rounded, so ours is an estimate.
DeepSeek's dense reasoning distill of DeepSeek-R1 onto Qwen2.5-14B, MIT licence. Hugging Face safetensors metadata lists 14,770,033,664 parameters (14.77B). 48 layers, 8 KV heads, head dim 128, context 131,072. The Q4_K_M GGUF is 8.99 GB (unsloth, 24 Oct 2026). At 8,192 tokens the rounded parts are 8.99 GB weights + 1.61 GB conversation memory + 0.80 GB working space = 11.40 GB, which equals the 11.4 GB usable line of a 12 GB card. The unrounded sum is a fraction over 11.4 GB, so the fit table does not mark Q4 as a full fit on 12 GB. IQ4_XS is an 8.12 GB file, about 10.53 GB in total at 8,192 tokens (our estimate), and that fits a 12 GB card. Only the 2-bit IQ2_XS file (4.70 GB, about 7.11 GB in total) fits an 8 GB card (about 7.4 GB usable). Ollama tag: deepseek-r1:14b.
Licence
Commercial use: yes
Commercial use allowed. Keep the licence and copyright notice when you share the weights.
Licence: MIT · checked 24 Oct 2026
Our reading of the licence, not legal advice.
Will DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B run on my graphics card?
Common questions
- How much memory does DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B need?
- About 11.4 GB at standard quality (Q4) with a conversation of 8,192 tokens: 9.0 GB for the model itself, 1.6 GB for the conversation and 0.8 GB for the software. The model size is a measured file; the conversation and software parts are our estimate.
- Does DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B fit on a single 24 GB graphics card?
- Yes, by our estimate. It needs about 11.4 GB, and we count 23.4 GB of a 24 GB card as usable.
- Are the speeds measured?
- No. They are our estimate from how fast each machine's memory is. Real speed also depends on the software and its settings.