How much VRAM does DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B need?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B requires approximately 0.0 GB VRAM at Q4_K_M quantization with 1K context and 10% overhead. At Q8_0 it needs ~0.0 GB, and at FP16 ~0.0 GB. Use the PCPARTGUIDE VRAM Calculator for exact requirements at any context length and overhead setting.

Can I run DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B on a consumer GPU?

Yes, DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B can run on consumer GPUs. At Q4_K_M quantization with moderate context length, it fits on a 12 GB GPU. For best performance, use a 12 GB or larger GPU with at least 8 GB VRAM for reasonable context lengths.

What is DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B's context window?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B supports a maximum context window of 32,768 tokens. The default context is 32,768 tokens. Larger contexts require proportionally more VRAM for the KV cache — use the VRAM Calculator to estimate exact requirements at your target context length.

What quantization level should I use for DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B?

For DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B, Q4_K_M is the recommended quantization — it provides an excellent quality-to-VRAM ratio at ~0.0 GB. Q8_0 offers slightly better quality at ~2× the VRAM. Q4_K_M is the sweet spot for most users.

How does DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B compare to similar models?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is a 1.5B Dense model from the DeepSeek family. Browse other DeepSeek models on the PCPARTGUIDE directory for comparable alternatives with different parameter counts and VRAM requirements. Use the Model Transparency scores to assess documentation quality and reproducibility.

DeepSeekDenseMIT

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is a dense transformer language model from the DeepSeek family, containing 1.54B parameters across 28 layers. It supports up to 33K tokens of context with a hidden dimension of 1536 and 2 KV heads for efficient…

1.5B

Parameters

32K

Max Context

Dense

Architecture

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Released

Text

Modality

About DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Reasoning

Technical Specifications

Total Parameters1.5B

ArchitectureDense

Attention TypeGQA (Grouped Query Attention)

Hidden Dimensiond = 1,536

Transformer Layers28

Attention Heads12

KV Headsn_kv = 2

Head Dimensiond_head = 128

Activation FunctionSwiGLU

NormalizationRMSNorm

Position EmbeddingRoPE

System Requirements

Estimated VRAM at 10% overhead for different quantization methods and context sizes.

Quantization	1K ctx	32K ctx
Q4_K_M0.50 B/W ~97% of FP16	0.82Consumer GPU	1.67Consumer GPU
Q8_01.00 B/W ~100% of FP16	1.62Consumer GPU	2.47Consumer GPU
F162.00 B/W Reference	3.21Consumer GPU	4.06Consumer GPU

7.6B

Layers

Context

32K

Find the right GPU for DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Use the interactive VRAM Calculator to see exactly how much memory you need at any quantization level, context length, and overhead setting.

Open VRAM Calculator Best GPU Guide VRAM Guide