If you just pulled the default version of qwen3.5 from ollama’s repo you downloaded a mediocre one that only uses ~6GB.
Check ollama show qwen3.5 and see if you get something like this in the result:
Model
architecture qwen35
parameters 9.7B
context length 262144
embedding length 4096
quantization Q4_K_M
This is the default version I got when I first tried using ollama without any experience. It worked, but it’s a heavily quantized, lower parameter version of the model – i.e. it’s pretty dumb – compared to what you can actually run on your hardware.






Try mixing 1 tbsp cocoa powder, 1 tbsp brown sugar, and 1 tbsp of peanut butter into 1/2 cup oats + 1 cup milk. Tastes like an energy bar.