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Mac Studio, M4 Max, 128GB, refurbished vs Mac Studio, M5 Max, 128GB

Neither box holds Qwen3-235B-A22B at BF16. The largest quant that fits is Q3_K_M, on Mac Studio, M4 Max, 128GB, refurbished.

Fit
Won't fit
Won't fit
Headroom
353GB
353GB
Est. speed
Cheapest today
$4,409 at Apple Certified Refurbished
$5,099 at Apple
Per GB of memory
$34
$40
Memory
128GB unified memory
128GB unified memory
Usable for a model
120GB
120GB
Memory bandwidth
546GB/s
614GB/s
Storage
1TB
512GB
Lowest recorded
$4,409 in 2d
$5,099 in 3d

Fit, headroom and speed are computed from each vendor’s published bandwidth and the model’s own size at 8K context. Prices are the cheapest listing we could read on each seller’s page. The arithmetic is here.

Where they actually differ

Every model we track at BF16. The rows where the two boxes agree are dimmed, because they are not what you are choosing between.