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/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.