Can a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 run DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (32B)?
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 has 8GB VRAM. Here's exactly whichprecision (FP16, FP8, GGUF)of DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (32B) fits and how smoothly it runs.
Too much for this GPU
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (8GB) doesn't have enough VRAM for DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (32B) even at its smallest size (19.4GB needed). Rent a cloud GPU or step up to a bigger card.
19.4GB
smallest fit on this GPU
Run it in the cloud instead
A 24GB RTX 4090 instance runs DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (32B) at full quality, starting at pennies/hour.
Disclosure: Cloud provider links are referrals at no additional cost to you.
DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (32B) variants on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
| Variant | Precision | Size | Total VRAM needed | Headroom | Fits? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4_K_M (4-bit Recommended)REC | q4_k_m | 19.4GB | 19.4GB | -11.4GB | ✗ OOM |
| Q8_0 (8-bit GGUF) | q8_0 | 36.3GB | 36.3GB | -28.3GB | ✗ OOM |
| FP16 (Uncompressed) | fp16 | 68.5GB | 68.5GB | -60.5GB | ✗ OOM |
"Total VRAM needed" = variant size + 0.0GB estimated text-encoder/VAE overhead. Headroom = GPU VRAM (8GB) − total needed. Green ≥ 1.5GB headroom; Red ≤ −2GB (will OOM).
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 at a glance
VRAM
8GB
Est. price
$220
Best for
65.0GB DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (32B) and lighter
Other models on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050
FLUX.1 DevFLUX.1 SchnellStable Diffusion XL (SDXL)Stable Diffusion 1.5Stable Diffusion 3 (SD3)Hunyuan VideoWan 2.1 VideoPony DiffusionLlama 3.2 (1B)Llama 3.2 (3B)Llama 3 / 3.1 (8B)DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (7B)
Other GPUs for DeepSeek-R1 Distill Qwen (32B)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (8GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (12GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti (12GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 (16GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 (24GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (10GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 (24GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 (8GB)NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti (16GB) (16GB)NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB)Apple MacBook Pro (M3 Max) (36GB)