MACSTUDIOS.NET · Field Guide · Data verified Jul 2026

Cheapest Mac to run Falcon 180B

180B parameters · quality index 10 · coding 5 · every Apple Silicon Mac ever sold, compared.

The cheapest Mac that runs Falcon 180B comfortably is a used Mac Studio M2 Ultra 24c/60c 192GB (2023) at about $3,499 EST. on the used market — running Q5_K_M quantization at roughly 3.1 tok/s with up to 2K tokens of context.

Every Mac that runs it, by used price

MachineUsed priceRuns atEst. speedMax context
Mac Studio M2 Ultra 24c/60c 192GB (2023)$3,499 EST.Q5_K_M3.1 tok/s2K tokens
Mac Studio M2 Ultra 24c/76c 192GB (2023)$3,749 EST.Q5_K_M3.1 tok/s2K tokens
Mac Studio M3 Ultra 32c/80c 256GB (2025)$5,887 EST.Q6_K2.9 tok/s2K tokens
Mac Studio M3 Ultra 32c/80c 512GB (2025)$7,457 EST.Q8_02.1 tok/s2K tokens

Run it

ollama run falcon:180b pulls the default (≈Q4) build once you have Ollama installed.

Open the interactive guide — speed simulator, TCO, all 75 machines →
Estimates: used prices are market ballparks, speeds are bandwidth-model estimates (±30%) calibrated against llama.cpp benchmarks — the methodology documents every formula. Computed from the same dataset as the live tool.