Can I Run DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B on RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM)?

Superseded model. DeepSeek R1 has been superseded by DeepSeek V4. This page is kept for reference; the newer family is a better starting point. View DeepSeek V4 →

Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated January 20, 2025

These figures are for DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B, a distill of Qwen2.5-14B — not the full DeepSeek R1. The full DeepSeek R1 (671B) needs about 405 GB of weights at Q4_K_M and is a different model.

Yes

Yes — DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B at Q6_K needs about 13.6 GB of the 16 GB usable on RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM) (~2.4 GB spare), at ~40.3 tok/s (estimated), with room for about 16,384 tokens of context.

Confidence: high · Recommended quantization: Q6_K · Estimated speed: ~40.3 tok/s

RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM) — what it gives a model

Usable memory for models16 GB
Memory bandwidth717 GB/s
Form factorLaptop
Operating systemWindows or Linux
Memory upgradeableYes

DeepSeek R1 on RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM): memory by quantization

QuantMemory neededFits 16 GB?Max contextEst. speedDownload
F1630.1 GB✗ No28 GB
Q8_017 GB✗ No14.9 GB
Q6_K13.6 GB✓ Yes16K~40.3 tok/s11.5 GB
Q5_K_M12.1 GB✓ Yes16K~45.6 tok/s9.9 GB
Q4_K_M10.6 GB✓ Yes32K~52.1 tok/s8.5 GB
Q3_K_M8.1 GB✓ Yes32K~68.5 tok/s6 GB
Q2_K6.7 GB✓ Yes32K~83 tok/s4.6 GB

Which DeepSeek R1 sizes fit

VariantNeeds at Q4_K_MFits?Est. speed
DeepSeek R1 (671B)406.5 GB✗ Too large
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 32B22.3 GB✗ Too large
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B10.6 GB✓ Fits~52.1 tok/s
DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B6.7 GB✓ Fits~81.8 tok/s

What to watch out for

RTX 4090 laptop limitations

Recommended setup

Ollama or llama.cpp (CUDA/ROCm) — vLLM if you need concurrent serving

How these numbers are calculated

FAQ

Can I run DeepSeek R1 on RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM)?

Yes — DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B at Q6_K needs about 13.6 GB of the 16 GB usable on RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM) (~2.4 GB spare), at ~40.3 tok/s (estimated), with room for about 16,384 tokens of context.

Which quantization of DeepSeek R1 should I use on RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM)?

Q6_K — it needs about 13.6 GB of the 16 GB available, downloads as roughly 11.5 GB, and runs at an estimated 40.3 tokens/sec with up to 16K of context.

What limits DeepSeek R1 on RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM)?

Nothing binding — the model fits with headroom and generates at a usable speed on this hardware.

Which runtime should I use?

Ollama or llama.cpp (CUDA/ROCm) — vLLM if you need concurrent serving

Other Models on RTX 4090 Laptop (16 GB VRAM, 32 GB RAM)

DeepSeek R1 on GPUs

What This Model Is Good At

Model & Tools

← Can I Run It? | DeepSeek R1 model page | Check your hardware