Mac Studio#
What Was Established#
Mac Studio M1 Max 64GB purchased 2026-04-17 for $2,299 (used/refurbished market). Deployed 2026-04-24 as the primary AI inference node for the homelab, replacing the Pavilion as the fast interactive reasoning machine.
Hardware#
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Model | Mac Studio (2022, M1 Max) |
| Hostname | Legolas |
| IP | 192.168.1.45 |
| Memory | 64GB Unified Memory |
| Memory bandwidth | ~400 GB/s |
| Purchase price | $2,299 (used) |
| Status | Deployed, operational 2026-04-24 |
Why This Hardware#
64GB unified memory is the key spec for LLM inference on Apple Silicon. Memory bandwidth determines tokens/second — the M1 Max at ~400 GB/s delivers ~25+ t/s for 27-31B models vs the Pavilion’s ~15 t/s CPU-only for E4B. At the time of purchase, 64GB Mac Studio/Mac Mini new from Apple was backordered to late June. The used M1 Max at $2,299 was judged a reasonable buy given scarcity.