MiniMax M3 230B-A10B — VRAM, Speed & Local Setup

Written by Jakub Rusinowski · Last updated June 26, 2026

Model library → MiniMax M3 → MiniMax M3 230B-A10B

PREVIEW — unverified. ~230B-parameter MoE (~10B active), 1M-token context, native multimodal, modified-MIT license. Reported ~59% on SWE-Bench Pro (vendor/community claim, not independently confirmed). At Q4 it needs ~130 GB — a 192 GB Mac Studio or a 2–4× datacenter-GPU cluster. Estimates derived from the M2.5 lineage; verify against the Hugging Face model card before relying on them.

MiniMax M3 230B-A10B needs about 140 GB of VRAM at Q4_K_M — quantized weights plus framework overhead, before any KV cache. On Apple Silicon that figure comes out of unified memory.

Specifications

Parameters230 Billion (10B active)
Context window1,000,000
ArchitectureMixture-of-Experts (multimodal)
ProviderMiniMax
LicenceModified MIT (attribution required)
Specified atQ4_K_M
System RAM256 GB
Record updated2026-06-26

Licence

Modified MIT — commercial use permitted. Commercial use permitted. No usage restrictions beyond attribution.

VRAM and Speed by Quantization

Modelled on a reference NVIDIA RTX 4090 (24 GB), with no KV cache (this record has no published architecture). Speed figures are ESTIMATES from the memory-bandwidth roofline described on the methodology page, not benchmarks we ran — rows marked measured come from published or reader-submitted runs. VRAM here includes the KV cache, so it reads higher than the headline figure above, which does not.

QuantWeightsVRAM neededEst. speedFit on 24 GB
Q2_K75.6 GB76.4 GB—Won't fit
Q3_K_M98.0 GB98.8 GB—Won't fit
Q4_K_M138.9 GB139.7 GB—Won't fit
Q5_K_M163.0 GB163.8 GB—Won't fit
Q6_K188.6 GB189.4 GB—Won't fit
Q8_0244.4 GB245.2 GB—Won't fit
F16460.0 GB460.8 GB—Won't fit

Want the memory numbers alone, at every quantization level and your own context length? Use the MiniMax M3 230B-A10B VRAM calculator.

Buy This HardwareApple Mac Studio M2 Ultra — 192 GB VRAM · 60 W board powerDeploy in the Cloud NowRunPod

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Recommended GPU

The cheapest catalogued GPU that runs MiniMax M3 230B-A10B is the Apple M2 Ultra (192 GB).

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Apple Mac Studio M2 Ultra
192 GB VRAM · 60 W board power
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How to Run MiniMax M3 230B-A10B

Install Ollama, then run:

ollama run minimax-m3

Weights on Hugging Face: MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-M3.

Published Benchmark Scores

Quality scores as published by the model's authors or an independent evaluator — not throughput, and not measured by us.

BenchmarkScoreProvenance
SWE-Bench Pro59 / 100 %vendor-claimed · https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI

Best for: software engineering, long context, multimodal, enterprise.

Can I Run MiniMax M3 230B-A10B on My GPU?

Other MiniMax M3 Sizes

MiniMax M3 230B-A10B — Frequently Asked Questions

How much VRAM does MiniMax M3 230B-A10B need?
About 140 GB at Q4_K_M — quantized weights plus framework overhead, before any KV cache. The cache grows with context length and is added on top; the table above folds it in. Apple Silicon counts unified memory toward the same figure.
Does MiniMax M3 230B-A10B run on an RTX 4090 (24 GB)?
No. MiniMax M3 230B-A10B needs about 140 GB at Q4_K_M, more than a single RTX 4090's 24 GB. It needs a larger card, several GPUs, or Apple Silicon with enough unified memory — or it runs with part of the weights offloaded to system RAM, which is much slower.
How do I run MiniMax M3 230B-A10B locally?
Install Ollama and run `ollama run minimax-m3`. That pulls the weights and starts a local OpenAI-compatible endpoint; after the download nothing leaves the machine.
What other sizes does MiniMax M3 come in?
MiniMax M3 230B-A10B (140 GB), MiniMax M3-VL (140 GB). Every size shares the family's training and licence; the larger ones score higher and need proportionally more memory.

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