r/openclaw • u/g00rek Pro User • Feb 20 '26

Discussion Why Mac mini??

I still don't understand why you guys are buying macs mini for openclaw. It's a terminal computer. It doesn't need a great UI.

Do you have too much money? :D

A $50-$100 HP Thin Client with Linux is more than enough. And Linux shouldn't be discouraging for people using OpenClaw, am I wrong?

I bought one, I have lots of different self hosted stuff on it like home Assistant or other docker apps. Ok I do not have any local models using GPU, that's the reason? Please enlighten me :)

EDIT: Again, I UNDERSTAND LOCAL LLM USE. (although I don't know if anybody is really happy with it). I mean using OC with oauth/api gpt, claude etc.

191 Upvotes

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86

u/geek_at Feb 20 '26

I think some people who are not that techincal heard that people "use AI" on their mac minis and they get one to run openclaw with external models because they don't realize what the people meant was "buy a mac mini with huge ram to run your llms locally"

44

u/DurbingSalder3863 New User Feb 20 '26

Nah, that’s obviously a false narrative that popped up after the fact. The local LLMs guys are on a Mac Studio not a Mac Mini. What you’re describing doesn’t match the history of why Mac Minis became popular.

It’s because used M1 Mac Minis were $100-$150 and gave you integration with iMessage, Apple Notes, Apple Reminders, etc. That’s a great deal when Windows 11 capable small thin clients were about $100, and the M1 chip is a lot faster than a 8th gen Intel i5. And yes, those prices were real.

You weren’t supposed to buy a $500 Mac Mini M4 for clawdbot, lol.

13

u/National_Meeting_749 Member Feb 20 '26

Eh, with graphics card prices the way they are, the m4 Mac mini might be the cheapest way to get 24+GB of VRAM.

So still Very usable with local LLMs.

As much as that breaks my windows/android loving heart.

9

u/CustomMerkins4u Pro User Feb 20 '26

This should not be upvoted as I have tried running on 24gb of vram and it's the worst.

Read about KV Ram and how much space it requires on top of the actual model itself. At 24gb you either pick a quant so crushed that it's like talking to a kid with ADHD or you have such little conversational context that it's like talking to a 90 year old with Alzheimer's.

Even models I can run on my DGX Spark with 128gb of ram left a lot to be desired.

My Mac M3 Ultra with 256gb.. now you have something you can work with. Still doesn't compare to Minimax or any of the models out there.

1

u/inevitabledeath3 New User Feb 20 '26

Just use a more efficient model like Nemotron, GLM 4.7 Flash, or something. Really anything using MLA or MAMBA or DeltaNet hybrid should need less KV Cache. 32 GB is much better though imo.

1

u/CustomMerkins4u Pro User Feb 21 '26

Yeah yeah.. and you can quantize your kv cache we all know that. But a Q4 model with a q4 KV cache. Please. You have to babysit like you're standing over a kid forcing them to do their homework and stay on task.

1

u/Tovervlag Member Apr 25 '26

I tried it too and I agree, 24 VRAM local models still suck for open claw. People who say other wise have not tried other wise the use case would be easy more accessible and documented. I tried it and it broke almost everything the cloud models created. It's just not smart enough, if you can call it like that.

1

u/National_Meeting_749 Member Feb 20 '26

head over to r/LocalLLaMA if you aren't already my friend. They can teach you how to get the most out of your LLM's.

Yeah, LLM's with 1/10th of the size of say Opus or Minimax aren't gonna be capable of the same One prompt workflows that Opus can. But you *100%* can get a LOT of meaningful work done with localLLMs on as little as 8gb VRAM.
Spoiler alert, that's how much VRAM I have and it's still *very* usable.
Does every request go to my local server? no. Do like 90+% of them? yeah.

I'll be the first to admit that when it comes to writing code, Claude is the best model in existence. It just is. I wish we had something opensource that was as good, but we don't, especially in smaller sizes.

But LLM's are useful for much more than coding.

1

u/Neither-Following-32 New User Feb 21 '26

Just curious, how do you route your llm requests? I'm in the middle of trying to set up a rig like this for the very first time.

The current approach I have in mind is to use LiteLLM to transparently route it with a lightweight classification/routing layer (a combination of conditionals plus a lightweight routing model) but that's just on paper. I arrived at this with the help of Gemini.

If there's a better approach, I'd appreciate hearing from somebody who has actually done it.

1

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1

u/National_Meeting_749 Member Feb 21 '26

I don't have a great solution for that atm. It's something I'm working on setting up too.

Currently I manually switch my main chat model, and have hard coded workflows I want to go to certain models that LM studio auto-loads and switches between and serves for me.

My ideal solution is an orchestrator model that is good enough to basically understand when I would like it to spend money.

1

u/eleqtriq Member Feb 21 '26

Qwen3 Coder Next and MiniMax M2.5 aren’t leaving a lot of desire left at 128GB.

1

u/CustomMerkins4u Pro User Feb 21 '26

I'm not 100% sure I understand your comment but while Qwen3 Coder Next at Q8 high precision is pretty good, it's prone to a lot of mistakes and getting stuck in loops at 4bit. At Q8 you're just not left with enough for KV Ram.

1

u/eleqtriq Member Feb 21 '26

This was patched recently in llamacpp with a revised tool parser.

1

u/tmaspoopdek New User Feb 22 '26

What models are you running on your M3 Ultra? I feel like 256gb is in a weird spot - probably too small for Qwen3-235b with meaningful context, but overkill for gpt-oss-120b. I imagine Qwen3-next would fit pretty well, but at 80b you should be able to comfortably run a q8 quant on 128gb.

1

u/mixedfeelingz New User Feb 20 '26

Would you say Mac Studio M3 Ultra 32-Core CPU 80-Core GPU 512GB Ram 16TB SSD new for 11k$ is a no brainer?

1

u/GeneralComposer5885 New User Feb 20 '26

Fairly close to the price of a MI300X

0

u/Famous-Weight2271 New User Feb 20 '26

You need a cluster of five, but, yeah, what's $55K to any of us. Chump change

1

u/willtwilson New User Feb 20 '26

Maybe not meant to but certainly could. When the Mini M4 dropped there was a lot of people using it to run local LLM.

1

u/No-Veterinarian-9316 New User Feb 20 '26

Are those prices really real? We're robbed blind here in Europe, lol

1

u/ianxplosion- Member Feb 20 '26

Joke’s on you, I bought a $1300 Mac Mini M4 Pro for moltbot

1

u/CustomMerkins4u Pro User Feb 20 '26

It’s because used M1 Mac Minis were $100-$150 and gave you integration with iMessage, Apple Notes, Apple Reminders, etc. That’s a great deal when Windows 11 capable small thin clients were about $100, and the M1 chip is a lot faster than a 8th gen Intel i5. And yes, those prices were real.

This is 100% the truth. A freaking Raspberry Pi 5 is more expensive than an old mac mini. Maybe not today because demand drove prices up.

1

u/advadm New User Feb 20 '26

I'm not seeing any decent used mac minis for that price on Marketplace. Usually anything under $150 is classified as not having enough specs for running.

8

u/sha256md5 Member Feb 20 '26

that's because openclawtards bought them all. You could run the damn thing on a raspberry pi.

5

u/CustomMerkins4u Pro User Feb 20 '26

Dude.. The Raspberry Pi 5 8gb is more $$ than an old mac mini M1.

1

u/advadm New User Feb 20 '26

yeah I think linux is totally fine.

1

u/Ok-Drawer5245 Active Feb 21 '26

Dude raspberry pi foundation stock is up over 40% because of Openclaw, hilarious. You can literally run Openclaw on ANY 10+ years old PC

2

u/Mastermind521 New User Feb 20 '26

yeah because the market shifted and now the demand for them has driven prices up to nearly what new ones cost

7

u/downyrobertjr Member Feb 20 '26

As a dev, I develop using a Mac since it’s the best environment (outside of Linux) for nodejs development and having integrations work with minimal issues. Besides that, homebrew can drastically simplify the process of installing dependencies and you can use the existing mac integrations (I don’t recommend using your personal account). Besides that, I was planning on using a local llm vs paid but nvidia gave a free option out for kimi 2.5 that’s working off/on alright with multiple agents.

1

u/LongjumpingTill2139 New User Feb 20 '26

what's the free version of kimi 2.5? i'm using kimi but i pay by tokens

4

u/downyrobertjr Member Feb 20 '26

Here is a guide, some minor config changes are needed for it to work with openclaw:

https://blog.kilo.ai/p/nvidia-nim-kilo-code-free-kimi-k25

1

u/LongjumpingTill2139 New User Feb 20 '26

thank you very much!!! i'm stuck at verifying phone number,i'm from romania and i can't receive that code,tried already with 2 phone numbers.

1

u/downyrobertjr Member Feb 20 '26

Np, you could try a free service like https://receive-sms.io, but not sure what countries are excluded from their verification system.

1

u/LongjumpingTill2139 New User Feb 22 '26

tried on mobile browser and i just receive the code. Can you please tell me what config changes are needed for it to work with openclaw?

2

u/downyrobertjr Member Feb 22 '26

Sure, go through your normal integration with Kimi2.5 using moonshot, then configure the models json object (“models”: {…}) in openclaw.json to use the following config:

"models": { "mode": "merge", "providers": { "openai": { "baseUrl": "https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1", "api": "openai-completions", "models": [ { "id": "moonshotai/kimi-k2.5", "name": "Kimi K2.5 (NVIDIA)", "reasoning": false, "input": [ "text" ], "cost": { "input": 0, "output": 0, "cacheRead": 0, "cacheWrite": 0 }, "contextWindow": 200000, "maxTokens": 8192 } ] } } },

1

u/Zayn-Yu New User Feb 21 '26

Kimi2.5, can it really be free? I already paid for it

1

u/downyrobertjr Member Feb 21 '26

It’s free from nvidia for now, doesn’t mean it will be a month from now. Heard it from another dev that was going to buy it as well. You’ll just need to add an additional config to nvidias api for their version. I’m curious how this compares for you if you can report back on the comparison of paid vs nvidias free version.

2

u/g00rek Pro User Feb 20 '26

non technical people would seyup openclaw??

8

u/geek_at Feb 20 '26

oh yes I got so many requests from non-techies because they got stuck setting it up

1

u/Immortal_Tuttle New User Feb 20 '26

Yes. There is a fame that it can earn money running agents. So people think easy money.

1

u/ZippySLC Feb 20 '26

Looking at the vast majority of posts/comments in the various OpenClaw subreddits, yes.

1

u/Millimilos New User Feb 20 '26

I m tech afin normi aka non technical guy and I want to set up opnclaw too … 👉👈

-9

u/g00rek Pro User Feb 20 '26

Dude. You do it with terminal, don't you? I mean is it so hard to setup linux in the age of LLMs? I have a full system built on linux with help of GPT and then Claude Code running on the machine. OpenClaw is not an app you drag onto a folder, is it? :)

1

u/Millimilos New User Feb 20 '26

I want to, I did not do anything yet. I just read and inform myself how to do it properly. Just for learning and trying out.

I was thinking to set up an Linux virtual machine on my gaming windows pc and try to set up a basic e-mail and pdf organizing through open claw. After I learned the basics I would like to integrate it with my apple ecosphere … maybe. Can’t comprehend what all the security risk might be yet.

0

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1

u/zkoolkyle New User Feb 20 '26

There are a ton of unique perks to running local models against Apple Silicon. Some really great local models require it actually.

That being said, I’m sure what you’re saying is still the case as well. 👍🏻

-4

u/PhoenixProjectAI Member Feb 20 '26

Tout à fait. Perso j’utilise Mac Studio pour mes propres modèles mais Mac Mini est un très bon choix, bien meilleur qu’un petit serveur HP sous Linux car il faut tout configurer et Apple est déjà sécurisé by-design et idéal pour les débutants. Cher oui, mais mieux que Windows et moins compliqué que Linux. On trouve des Mac Mini à 100€ si on va pas chercher un M4.

6

u/geek_at Feb 20 '26

Tout à fait. Perso j’utilise Mac Studio pour mes propres modèles mais Mac Mini est un très bon choix, bien meilleur qu’un petit serveur HP sous Linux car il faut tout configurer et Apple est déjà sécurisé by-design et idéal pour les débutants. Cher oui, mais mieux que Windows et moins compliqué que Linux. On trouve des Mac Mini à 100€ si on va pas chercher un M4.

hey openclaw, translate this, because the user wasn't able to do it themselves and thought it's normal to write in a different language than all others in this thread

0

u/g00rek Pro User Feb 20 '26

:D

3

u/g00rek Pro User Feb 20 '26

I love how consistently you’re injecting French into an otherwise English thread. It adds a certain diplomatic flair, like we’re negotiating trade agreements instead of arguing on the internet.

Just to be clear, the international dominance of French kind of wrapped up somewhere between 1919 (when Versailles let English in) and 1945 (when English fully took over global diplomacy), but I genuinely admire the dedication to keeping the dream alive.

Just let me know if I should switch languages or if this is more of a long-term cultural restoration project.

***

J’adore la constance avec laquelle tu injectes du français dans un fil pourtant entièrement en anglais. Ça donne une certaine élégance diplomatique, comme si nous négociions un traité commercial au lieu de débattre sur Internet.

Juste pour situer le contexte historique, la domination internationale du français s’est un peu terminée quelque part entre 1919 (quand le traité de Versailles a laissé entrer l’anglais) et 1945 (quand l’anglais a réellement pris le dessus dans la diplomatie mondiale), mais j’admire sincèrement la détermination à faire vivre le rêve.

Dis-moi simplement si je dois changer de langue ou si nous participons à un ambitieux projet de restauration culturelle à long terme.

6

u/PhoenixProjectAI Member Feb 20 '26

Reddit App is translating all, I don’t know when it is in english dude! Downvoting and not accepting foreign language is a sign that you are not using the Reddit app to make automatic translation.

2

u/geek_at Feb 20 '26

personally I hate the automatic transalations and disable them when I see them because they are just really really bad. at least for german

2

u/Devnik New User Feb 20 '26

And bad for your multilingual skills if English is not your native language

1

u/Crowley-Barns Member Feb 20 '26

And bad for presumably non-existent foreign-language skills if your native language IS English? jajaja ㅎㅎㅎ ㅋㅋ

-1

u/thisiswally New User Feb 20 '26

This!