Mac Studio & Mac mini Local LLM Configurator

Hardware & Workload Parameters

Target Local LLM (Coding Assistant)

Unified Memory Allocation

Storage Strategy

Development & Media Workload VS Code + Dart/Flutter Mobile Emulator (4–6 GB RAM) Screen Recording / YouTube Video Encoding (OBS Studio, 3 GB RAM) Large Context Window Buffer (16k–32k KV Cache, 3–5 GB RAM)

Financing / Payment Horizon

Recommended Machine
M4 Pro or M3/M4 Max with 48GB Unified Memory
$41.64 / mo
36-mo Apple Financial Services

Model Inference Speed

28.5 t/s (14B model)

Fast enough for real-time code autocomplete

Memory Headroom

24.0 GB free

Comfortably fits emulator + OBS

Unified Memory Distribution 48 GB Total

LLM Weights: 12.0 GB

Flutter + OBS + macOS: 12.0 GB

Available: 24.0 GB

Optimal Developer Sweet Spot: Comfortably fits 14B model in VRAM/RAM with 24GB headroom for VS Code, Flutter emulator, and recording software. Zero disk swapping.

Storage Analysis: 2TB Internal selected to avoid external Thunderbolt dongle bottleneck for large model weights and video caches.

Apple Silicon Storage & Price Breakdown

Tier	Estimated Hardware Cost	Est. Monthly (36 mo)	Sequential Read/Write
1TB Internal (Stock)	$1,599 - $1,799	$36.00 / mo	~5,500 MB/s (Direct PCIe)
2TB Internal (Configured)	$1,999 - $2,199	$41.64 / mo	~6,200 MB/s (Direct PCIe)
1TB Int + 2TB TB4 Enclosure	$1,599 + $260 drive = $1,859	$38.80 / mo + cash drive	~2,800 MB/s (Cable / Port bound)

Recommendation rationale: Upgrading internal storage directly to 2TB allows seamless cache directories for huggingface/ollama (which easily reach 100GB+ for 3–4 models), plus raw 4K footage without juggling external drive disconnections during active simulator tests.

Hardware & Workload Parameters

Apple Silicon Storage & Price Breakdown

Hardware Ledger & Contracted Metrics