DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B vs Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking
Side-by-side comparison of VRAM requirements, quantization, context length, and hardware compatibility.
Specifications
| DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B | Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking | |
|---|---|---|
| Parameters | 14.8B | 4.2B |
| Context | 131K | 262K |
| Architecture | Qwen2ForCausalLM | Qwen3_5ForConditionalGeneration |
| License | MIT | Apache 2.0 |
| Downloads | 742.0K | 2.8K |
| Released | Feb 2025 | Mar 2026 |
VRAM by Quantization: DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B vs Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking
| Quantization | Bits | DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B VRAM | Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking VRAM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q2_K | 3.40 | 7.0 GB | 2.3 GB |
| Q3_K_M | 3.90 | 7.9 GB | 2.5 GB |
| Q3_K_S | 3.50 | 7.2 GB | 2.3 GB |
| Q4_0 | 4.00 | 8.1 GB | — |
| Q4_K_M | 4.80 | 9.6 GB | 3.0 GB |
| Q5_K_M | 5.70 | 11.2 GB | 3.5 GB |
| Q6_K | 6.60 | 12.9 GB | 3.9 GB |
| Q8_0 | 8.00 | 15.5 GB | 4.7 GB |
Verdict
Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking needs less VRAM at Q4_K_M (3.0 GB vs 9.6 GB), so it fits on smaller GPUs. Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking supports a longer context window (262K tokens). DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B is the more widely downloaded of the two.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Which needs less VRAM, DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B or Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking?
At Q4_K_M, DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B needs 9.6 GB and Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking needs 3.0 GB, so Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking is the lighter option to run locally.
- Which has a longer context window, DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B or Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking?
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B supports 131,072 tokens and Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking supports 262,144 tokens.
- What is the difference between DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B and Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking?
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14B is a 14.8B model from DeepSeek (Qwen family), while Qwen3.5 4B Safety Thinking is a 4.2B model from MerlinSafety (Qwen family). Compare their VRAM requirements above to see which fits your GPU or Mac.