Mac mini M5 Pro (base config) for local AI in the UK
Ranks #21 of 23 for 7-9B models on value (£27 per token/s at £1,699 new).
Key facts
- Cheapest UK price
- £1,699 new
- Memory
- 24 GB
- Memory bandwidth
- 307 GB/s
- Largest model it can run
- ~36B parameters at 4-bit (estimate: ~0.6 GB per billion parameters + ~2 GB overhead)
- Shop
- eBay UK (used)
- £1,699 new: Apple UK Store 'From' price, base config, checked 2026-10-20 (source)
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Speed and value by model size
| Size class | Fits at 4-bit? | Speed | £ per tok/s | Value rank | Reference model |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7-9B models | Yes | 63.9 words/sec* from 5 tests | £27 | #21 of 23 | Llama 2 7B Q4_0 |
| 12-14B models | Yes | no verified data yet | – | not ranked | Gemma 4 12B Q4_0 |
| 27-35B models | Yes | no verified data yet | – | not ranked | Qwen 3.6 27B Q4_K_M |
| 70B+ models | No (needs ~42 GB+) | – | – | – | no reference model yet |
Speed is the median single-user decode speed running the like-for-like reference model for that class, in tokens per second (*a token is roughly ¾ of a word, so words/sec is a rough guide). Ranks use the cheapest UK price and need at least 3 test runs; ⚠ = low sample, shown but not ranked. "Fits" means the model fits fully in memory at ~4-bit. How we measure.
Other models measured
- Llama 2 7B F16 (7.0B, 7-9B class): 21.4 tok/s from 5 tests · run
- Llama 2 7B Q8_0 (7.0B, 7-9B class): 37.8 tok/s from 5 tests · run
Shown for information only: these don't affect rank. Mixture-of-experts models (names with "a3b", "moe" and similar) run much faster than their size suggests.
Similar price alternatives
- RTX 3090 Ti 24GB £1,020 used · 24 GB · 155.6 tok/s on 7-9B · #16 of 23 for 7-9B
- RTX 5080 16GB £1,276 used · 16 GB · 183.8 tok/s on 7-9B · #18 of 23 for 7-9B
- RTX 4090 24GB £2,200 used · 24 GB · 167.7 tok/s on 7-9B · #19 of 23 for 7-9B
- AMD Strix Halo (Ryzen AI Max+ 395) 128GB £2,830 new · 128 GB · 50.6 tok/s on 7-9B · #23 of 23 for 7-9B
See the Mac mini M5 Pro (base config) on the leaderboard → · Best under £2,000 · All cards · Beginner's guide · Methodology
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