Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated January 20, 2025
Yes, comfortably — you'll have ~2.8 GB of headroom running DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B at Q4_K_M (9.2 GB, ~39 tok/s (est.)) with room for up to 16K context.
Check price on Amazon — NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB
| VRAM | 12 GB |
| Memory Bandwidth | 360 GB/s |
| Quant | VRAM needed | Fits 12 GB? | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|
| F16 | 29.5 GB | ✗ No | — |
| Q8_0 | 16.3 GB | ✗ No | — |
| Q6_K | 13 GB | ✗ No | — |
| Q5_K_M | 11.4 GB | ✓ Yes | 4K |
| Q4_K_M | 9.9 GB | ✓ Yes | 16K |
| Q3_K_M | 7.4 GB | ✓ Yes | 16K |
| Q2_K | 6.1 GB | ✓ Yes | 32K |
VRAM needed assumes a 4K-token context with an f16 KV cache; “Max context” is the largest window that still fits in 12 GB. Figures are estimates from parameter count, quantization and memory bandwidth — the analyzer lets you tune KV-cache quant and context.
| DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B | Q4_K_M · 9.2 GB · ~39 tok/s (est.) |
| DeepSeek R1 Distill Llama 8B | Q4_K_M · 5.8 GB · ~62 tok/s (est.) |
At 2 hrs/day, buying (~$329) beats renting at $0.34/hr after about 16 months.
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Cloud rates verified 2026-07 — estimates, and marketplace prices vary. Buying price is GPU MSRP only, not a full PC.
Yes, comfortably — you'll have ~2.8 GB of headroom running DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B at Q4_K_M (9.2 GB, ~39 tok/s (est.)) with room for up to 16K context.
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B at Q4_K_M quantization (9.2 GB), estimated ~39 tokens/sec, up to 16K context.
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