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Do I actually need to max out an M5 Ultra for local AI, or is the $5,999 base model the sweet spot for Qwen3.8-27B coding?

This story is from 2026-08-26. It is preserved in the archive; the latest stories are on the live feed.

I’ve gone way too deep into the local LLM hardware rabbit hole. I started by looking at a ~$11k Mac Studio with 512GB RAM , then considered 128GB M5 Max Mac Studios and maxed-out M5 Max MacBook Pros. But I keep coming back to the base $5,999 M5 Ultra Mac Studio : 30-core CPU / 64-core GPU 96GB unif…

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  1. 2026-08-26 06:23 · r/LocalLLM
    Do I actually need to max out an M5 Ultra for local AI, or is the $5,999 base model the sweet spot for Qwen3.8-27B coding?

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