MACSTUDIOS.NET · Field Guide · Data verified Jul 2026
Cheapest Mac to run Mistral Large 123B
123B parameters · quality index 27 · coding 30 · every Apple Silicon Mac ever sold, compared.
The cheapest Mac that runs Mistral Large 123B comfortably is a used Mac Studio M4 Max 16c/40c 128GB (2025) at about $2,511 EST. on the used market — running Q5_K_M quantization at roughly 3.1 tok/s with up to 29K tokens of context.
Every Mac that runs it, by used price
| Machine | Used price | Runs at | Est. speed | Max context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mac Studio M4 Max 16c/40c 128GB (2025) | $2,511 EST. | Q5_K_M | 3.1 tok/s | 29K tokens |
| Mac Studio M1 Ultra 20c/48c 128GB (2022) | $2,951 EST. | Q5_K_M | 4.5 tok/s | 29K tokens |
| Mac Studio M2 Ultra 24c/60c 128GB (2023) | $2,999 EST. | Q5_K_M | 4.5 tok/s | 29K tokens |
| MacBook Pro M3 Max 16c/40c 128GB (2023) | $3,062 EST. | Q5_K_M | 2.3 tok/s | 29K tokens |
| Mac Studio M1 Ultra 20c/64c 128GB (2022) | $3,197 EST. | Q5_K_M | 4.5 tok/s | 29K tokens |
| Mac Studio M2 Ultra 24c/76c 128GB (2023) | $3,249 EST. | Q5_K_M | 4.5 tok/s | 29K tokens |
| Mac Studio M2 Ultra 24c/60c 192GB (2023) | $3,499 EST. | Q6_K | 4.2 tok/s | 128K tokens |
| Mac Studio M2 Ultra 24c/76c 192GB (2023) | $3,749 EST. | Q6_K | 4.2 tok/s | 128K tokens |
| MacBook Pro M4 Max 16c/40c 128GB (2024) | $3,772 EST. | Q5_K_M | 3.1 tok/s | 29K tokens |
| MacBook Pro M5 Max 18c/32c 128GB (2026) | $4,199 EST. | Q5_K_M | 3.5 tok/s | 29K tokens |
See all 12 machines, other price bases, and live currency conversion →
Run it
ollama run mistral-large:123b pulls the default (≈Q4) build once you have Ollama installed.
Or skip the hardware
Cloud APIs serve Mistral Large 123B at about $3 per million output tokens. The main site's break-even solver computes the daily usage where owning a Mac becomes cheaper than renting.
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.