Question 1

Can the CPU-only (DDR5 tuned / 4-channel) run qwen3 30B-A3B MoE?

Accepted Answer

qwen3 30B-A3B MoE needs about 18.98GB working set (weights 18.6GB + KV cache 0.38GB at 4k context). The CPU-only (DDR5 tuned / 4-channel) offers ~30GB usable — verdict: full. 19.0 GB needed of 30 GB usable — headroom for context

Question 2

How fast is qwen3 30B-A3B MoE on the CPU-only (DDR5 tuned / 4-channel)?

Accepted Answer

~43–67 tok/s (active-expert estimate) on the CPU-only (DDR5 tuned / 4-channel). computed roofline: 179.2 GB/s × 0.45–0.70 efficiency window / 1.9GB (Q4_K_M) — bands, never points. MoE: file is 18.6GB (that decides fit) but only ~3B of experts activate per token (~1.9GB streamed) — band below is the active-expert estimate, optimistic; community MoE rows run several× the naive bandwidth math

Question 3

What should I run qwen3 30B-A3B MoE on instead?

Accepted Answer

Mac mini M4 (32GB) runs it fully ($999).

Can the CPU-only (DDR5 tuned / 4-channel) run qwen3 30B-A3B MoE?

Run qwen3 30B-A3B MoE on instead