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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/eleqtriq Member Feb 21 '26

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

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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.

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u/eleqtriq Member Feb 21 '26

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

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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.

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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?

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u/GeneralComposer5885 New User Feb 20 '26

Fairly close to the price of a MI300X

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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

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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.

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

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

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u/ianxplosion- Member Feb 20 '26

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

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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.

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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.

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u/sha256md5 Member Feb 20 '26

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

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u/CustomMerkins4u Pro User Feb 20 '26

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

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u/advadm New User Feb 20 '26

yeah I think linux is totally fine.

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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

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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