DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B needs ~13.6 GB VRAM. RTX 3080 12GB has 12.0 GB. With Q4_K_M quantization, expect ~47 tok/s.
Operating mode
Interactive favors responsiveness, while light API and scale-out lean harder on serving readiness. The fit stays the same, but the recommendation lens changes.
Current mode
Balanced
Balanced for general local use. Keeps the ranking neutral across personal and serving workflows.
Select quantization to explore
1.6 GB over capacity — needs offload or smaller quantization
Fit status
Very compromised (needs ~1 GB host RAM)
Decode
49.7 tok/s
TTFT
3892 ms
Safe context
7K
Memory
13.6 GB / 12.0 GB
Offload
10%
It fits through host-memory offload, and offload is the main reason performance drops.
CPU or host-memory offload is active
About 10% of the working set spills out of accelerator memory, which usually hurts latency and sustained decode throughput.
Very little memory headroom
You can run the model, but there is not much room left for longer context, bigger batches, extra apps, or future model updates.
Remove offload with more accelerator memory
Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.
Buy headroom, not only minimum fit
A slightly larger memory tier gives you safer context growth and makes the recommendation more future-proof.
Increase host RAM if you keep offloading
This setup may need roughly {ram} GB of extra host RAM just for the offloaded portion, before OS and other tools.
| Workload | Grade | Fit | Decode | TTFT | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | A | Runs with offload (needs ~0.1 GB host RAM) | 63.3 tok/s | 1669 ms | 7K |
| Coding | B | Very compromised | 47.0 tok/s | 4120 ms | 7K |
| Agentic Coding | F | Too heavy | 33.0 tok/s | 8544 ms | 7K |
| Reasoning | B | Very compromised (needs ~1 GB host RAM) | 49.7 tok/s | 4600 ms | 7K |
| RAG | F | Too heavy | 33.0 tok/s | 10680 ms |
How DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B (14B params) fits at each quantization level on RTX 3080 12GB (12.0 GB usable).
| Quant | Bits | VRAM | Quality | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Q2_K | 2 | 5.5 GB | Low | A77 |
Q3_K_S | 3 | 6.9 GB | Low | A76 |
NVFP4 | 4 |
Copy-paste commands to run DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B on your machine.
Run
ollama run deepseek-r1Upgrade options
RTX 5060 Ti 16GBBudget pickRemoves host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Adds memory headroom for longer context windows and future model growth.
~$449 MSRP
RTX 4060 Ti 16GBBest valueRemoves host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Adds memory headroom for longer context windows and future model growth.
~$499 MSRP
RTX 2000 Ada 16GBNVIDIA upgradeRemoves host-memory offload, which is usually the single biggest latency and throughput win.
Adds memory headroom for longer context windows and future model growth.
~$625 MSRP
Yes, RTX 3080 12GB can run DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B with a B grade (Very compromised). Expected decode speed: 47.0 tok/s.
DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B (14B parameters) requires approximately 13.6 GB of memory with Q4_K_M quantization.
The recommended quantization for DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B is Q4_K_M, which balances quality and memory efficiency.
On RTX 3080 12GB, DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B achieves approximately 47.0 tokens per second decode speed with a time-to-first-token of 4120ms using Q4_K_M quantization.
For coding workloads, DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B on RTX 3080 12GB receives a B grade with 47.0 tok/s and 7K context.
On RTX 3080 12GB, DeepSeek R1 Distill 14B can safely use up to 7K tokens of context. The model's official context limit is 33K, but available memory constrains the safe maximum.
Paste this snippet into any page to show a live fit card.
<iframe src="https://willitrunai.com/embed/deepseek-r1-distill-14b-on-rtx-3080-12gb" width="400" height="180" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;overflow:hidden;" title="Will It Run AI — fit result"></iframe>
Preview:
| 7K |
7.8 GB |
| Medium |
| A76 |
Q4_K_MBest for your GPU | 4 | 8.5 GB | Medium | A76 |
Q5_K_M | 5 | 10.1 GB | High | F0 |
Q6_K | 6 | 11.5 GB | High | F0 |
Q8_0 | 8 | 15.0 GB | Very High | F0 |
F16 | 16 | 28.7 GB | Maximum | F0 |
Remove offload with more accelerator memory. Prioritize a GPU or unified-memory tier that fits the whole model natively. Removing offload usually helps more than small compute gains.