Sunk Cost sunkcost.ai Data checked 2026-09-03

What hardware do you need to run Hy-Memory 30B-A3B?

Hy-Memory 30B-A3B at Q4_K_M is 18 GB of weights, with a context ceiling of 256k tokens. Tencent built it for one job: writing the memory bank behind Mem0, MemOS and Hy-Memory, deciding what a long-running agent keeps and how new evidence changes what it already holds. Thirty billion parameters with about three running per token, English and Chinese, and not a general chat model. On the cheapest machine that runs it, a Framework Desktop, 32GB, it generates 28 tok/s at 32k of context, worked out from memory bandwidth.

Cheapest machine that runs itStrix Halo Framework Desktop, 32GB at $1,269
Fastest machine that runs itNVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, 32GB at $1,999card only — 117 tok/s estimated at 32k context
Honest answer on costPays back in 103 years at 500k tokens a day.

How good is Hy-Memory 30B-A3B, really?

It has not been placed on the intelligence index yet. See the whole table.

What Hy-Memory 30B-A3B costs either way

Nobody rents Hy-Memory 30B-A3B by the token. The closest hosted match, GLM-4.7-Flash, costs $0.0605 per million input tokens and $0.4 per million output (OpenRouter, cheapest active endpoint, checked 2026-11-03). Buying a machine only beats that if you use it hard enough, for long enough, that the hardware price divides down below the rental bill. What a million tokens costs each way puts the two prices side by side.

Machines that run Hy-Memory 30B-A3B

Every machine here runs it, but not to the same length. The Strix Halo Framework Desktop, 32GB stops at 32k; the DGX Spark GB10 Grace Blackwell, 128GB takes it to 256k, which is this model's own ceiling and the longest the calculator offers. The weights are the same size on every machine; what differs is the memory left for the key-value cache, which grows with every token you keep.

MachinePriceSpeed at 32kLongest contextPay-back
Strix Halo Framework Desktop, 32GB $1,269 28 tok/s estimated 32k Pays back in 103 years Run the numbers
AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700, 32GB $1,299card only 66 tok/s estimated 64k Pays back in 104 years Run the numbers
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, 32GB $1,999card only 117 tok/s estimated 64k Pays back in 163 years Run the numbers
Mac mini M5 Pro, 48GB $2,299 18 tok/s estimated 128k Pays back in 213 years Run the numbers
Mac Studio M5 Max, 36GB $2,499 27 tok/s estimated 64k Pays back in 207 years Run the numbers
MacBook Pro M5 Pro (16-inch), 48GB $3,599 18 tok/s estimated 128k Pays back in 333 years Run the numbers
DGX Spark GB10 Grace Blackwell, 128GB $4,699 35 tok/s estimated 256k Pays back in 372 years Run the numbers

The table is the cheapest machine in each family, not the only one that runs it: 41 of the 56 machines on this site hold it at 32k. Within a family only memory decides, so that is every Mac Studio and Strix Halo box at any size, every NVIDIA card with 24GB or more, every Mac mini and MacBook Pro with 48GB or more, the Radeon AI PRO R9700, 32GB and the DGX Spark, 128GB. One table sets every machine against the others: price, the memory its GPU can use, what it holds and how long it takes to pay for itself.

One machine per family, cheapest first. Speeds are measured where a public benchmark exists and estimated from memory bandwidth otherwise; the calculator says which for any configuration. The longest context is the longest setting the calculator offers that the machine still holds this model at, cache included, and no machine is shown taking it past its own 256k limit. Each one opens the calculator on that machine at that length.

For scale, the calculator starts from 80 tok/s for a hosted API and times a local machine against it. 1 of the 7 above reaches it, and the slowest is 18 tok/s.

The cheapest machine that runs it is sold with 32 GB. There is a page on what 32 GB runs, machine by machine: it names the 6 machines here sold at that size, and the 35 current models the roomiest of them holds at 32k, this one among them.

It fits in less memory than that: the smallest size here that runs it at 32k is 24 GB, on the GeForce RTX 3090, 24GB at $1,499, card only, which hands a model 23 GB and is no longer sold.

Run Hy-Memory 30B-A3B at 256k on the DGX Spark GB10 Grace Blackwell, 128GB

How much memory does Hy-Memory 30B-A3B need at 256k?

Every figure above is priced at 32k of context. At 256k, which is this model's own ceiling and the longest the calculator offers, Hy-Memory 30B-A3B needs 44 GB rather than 21.5 GB. The weights are the same either way; the key-value cache goes from 3.2 GB to 25.8 GB.

28 of the 37 machines here still sold at a published price hold Hy-Memory 30B-A3B at 32k and 20 hold it at 256k. The cheapest still sold goes from the Framework Desktop, 32GB at $1,269 to the Corsair AI Workstation 300, 64GB at $1,700.

On the Corsair AI Workstation 300, 64GB it runs 28 tok/s estimated at 32k and 5.1 tok/s estimated at 256k. Every token generated reads the whole cache back, so a longer window is slower as well as bigger.

Two more machines, at a shorter window

The table above lists the machines that run it at 32k, the context the calculator starts on, where Hy-Memory 30B-A3B needs 21 GB. Two more machines hold it at a shorter window, because the weights are the same size either way and the key-value cache is not. None of them is cheaper than the table above, which starts at $1,269.

MachinePriceLongest window it fitsNeeds there
Mac mini M6, 32GB $1,299 16k 20 GB
MacBook Pro M5 (14-inch), 32GB $2,399 16k 20 GB

One machine per family, cheapest first, from the same list as the table above. Each window is the longest setting the calculator offers that the machine still holds this model at, and it opens the calculator on that machine at that length. What it needs there is the weights plus the key-value cache at that window, measured against the memory each machine's GPU can address, which that machine's own page gives.

The specifics

Parameters
30.1B, of which 3B are active per token
Quantisation
Q4_K_M
Weights on disk
18 GB
KV cache
3.2 GB at 32k context — Every one of the 48 layers caches the whole context, at four key-value heads by 128 wide. The config states no sliding window and no linear-attention layer, so nothing here caps what a long window costs: the cache grows with every token you keep, all the way to the 256k ceiling. How weights and cache add up.
Maximum context
256k tokens
Licence
Apache 2.0
Sources
tencent/Hy-Memory-30B-A3B, tencent/Hy-Memory-30B-A3B-GGUF, rapatsky/Hy-Memory-30B-A3B-GGUF