Buy an M5 Max Mac Studio (128GB, €5,849) for local Qwen now, or wait for M7 Ultra in 2028?
Mxmtm · reddit · 2026-09-08
The author weighs buying a Mac Studio (M5 Max, 128GB unified memory, €5,849) now to run qwen3.8-flash-next locally at 55 tok/s (oQ4e) for private documents, notes and coding, versus waiting. Case for buying: privacy, no subscription, still a usable machine in five years. Case for waiting: RAM prices are inflated, M7 Ultra is likely 2028, per-parameter capability keeps improving, and cheap APIs leave privacy as almost the only argument for local. They also question the memory arms race — 64GB was 'plenty' a few years ago, 128GB is today's floor — and ask whether M1/M2 Ultra owners still run local models or now own an expensive web browser.
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