Local AI Deals

Mac Studio, M4 Max, 128GB, refurbished vs Mac Studio, M5 Ultra, 96GB

Both hold Qwen3-32B at Q8_0. Mac Studio, M5 Ultra, 96GB decodes an est. 22.9 tok/s against 10.4, and costs $1,090 more — $87.18 per extra token per second. Worth it if you read the output as it arrives; not if you queue jobs.

Fit
Fits
Fits
Headroom
83GB
51GB
Est. speed
10.4 tok/s
22.9 tok/s
Cheapest today
$4,409 at Apple Certified Refurbished
$5,499 at Best Buy
Per GB of memory
$34
$57
Memory
128GB unified memory
96GB unified memory
Usable for a model
120GB
88GB
Memory bandwidth
546GB/s
1.2TB/s
Storage
1TB
1TB
Lowest recorded
$4,409 in 3d
$5,499 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 Q8_0. The rows where the two boxes agree are dimmed, because they are not what you are choosing between.