DeepSeek V3.1 (Q4_0) — 54.7 GBon OVH ai1-1-GPU
Overview
DeepSeek V3.1 is a 684.53B parameter moe language model by DeepSeek, with code, multilingual, thinking, tool-calls capabilities. It supports a context window of up to 163,840 tokens.
DeepSeek V3.1 is a 685-billion-parameter Mixture-of-Experts model from DeepSeek, activating 8 of 256 experts per token plus one shared expert. It delivers frontier-level performance on code generation, reasoning, and multilingual tasks while using far fewer active parameters per inference step than comparably sized dense models. The model supports thinking mode, tool calling, and nine languages. With a 160K context window, it requires multi-GPU or distributed setups but quantizes down to Q2 levels for reduced VRAM footprint.
At Q4_0 quantization (medium quality tier), the model weighs 354 GB. This exceeds the 32 GB of VRAM on OVH ai1-1-GPU. Inference is still possible via CPU offload or memory-mapped loading from disk, but expect significantly reduced performance.
Hardware Requirements
| Model size | 354 GB |
| VRAM available | 32 GB |
| VRAM used | 54.7 GB |
| System RAM | 40 GB |
| Min RAM required | 354 GB |
| GPU layers | 0 / 61 |
| Context size | 32,768 |
| Backend | cuda13 |
| Flash attention | No |
| Reading from disk | Yes |
Performance Notes
Deploy
Prerequisites
Ensure your GPU nodes are prepared with the NVIDIA container toolkit:
ansible-playbook prositronic.infra.nvidia_container_toolkit
Command
helmfile --state-values-file <(curl -s https://www.prositronic.eu/values/deepseek-v3-1/q4_0/nvidia-v100s.yaml) apply
Generated values.yaml
/values/deepseek-v3-1/q4_0/nvidia-v100s.yaml
Loading values…
Frequently Asked Questions
How much VRAM does DeepSeek V3.1 (Q4_0) need?
The Q4_0 quantization of DeepSeek V3.1 requires 354 GB. The 32 GB of VRAM on OVH ai1-1-GPU is insufficient for GPU layers, so inference runs on CPU.
Can I run DeepSeek V3.1 on OVH ai1-1-GPU?
It is possible but not recommended. OVH ai1-1-GPU does not have enough VRAM to accelerate DeepSeek V3.1 (Q4_0), so inference will rely on CPU and system RAM.
What is quantization?
Quantization reduces a model's numerical precision from its original floating-point format to a more compact representation. This shrinks the file size and VRAM footprint, making it possible to run large models on consumer hardware. The trade-off is a small reduction in output quality. Q4_0 compresses DeepSeek V3.1 from its original size down to 354 GB.
What quantization should I choose for DeepSeek V3.1?
Q4_0 is a medium-quality quantization. Higher-quality quants (Q8, Q6) preserve more model accuracy but need more VRAM. Lower quants (Q4, Q3, Q2) reduce VRAM usage at the cost of some quality. Choose based on your available hardware and quality requirements.
Why are some layers offloaded to CPU?
OVH ai1-1-GPU has 32 GB of VRAM, but DeepSeek V3.1 (Q4_0) requires approximately 354 GB. Only 0 of 61 layers fit in VRAM; the remaining layers run on CPU, which is slower but still functional.
What is MoE and how does it affect deployment?
DeepSeek V3.1 uses a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture with 256 experts, of which 8 are active per token. This means only a fraction of the model weights are used for each inference step, allowing MoE models to be larger in total parameter count while remaining efficient at inference time.