Mac mini power consumption

Anyone have experiences with power consumption on the various Mac mini models? Numbers in watt or amps, temps...

I'm considering using a mini, using a 7200rpm disk and 1GB ram, as a home server and partly workstation (reading mail/news nad browsing). It'll run dns/dhcp/mailserver/samba/http, house my documentation, mail and such..

Since it'll run 24/7, and electricity is not for free, I'm looking for somthing powpower/lownoise, while also taking up little space. I'm a bit worried about temps, mostly for the sake of keeping the disk at sufficient low temps, hence cpu temps/power has special interest.

On 2006-02-12 04:54:51 -0500, Mogens V. said:

Anyone have experiences with power consumption on the various Mac mini models? Numbers in watt or amps, temps...

I'm considering using a mini, using a 7200rpm disk and 1GB ram, as a home server and partly workstation (reading mail/news nad browsing). It'll run dns/dhcp/mailserver/samba/http, house my documentation, mail and such..

Since it'll run 24/7, and electricity is not for free, I'm looking for somthing powpower/lownoise, while also taking up little space. I'm a bit worried about temps, mostly for the sake of keeping the disk at sufficient low temps, hence cpu temps/power has special interest.

Maximum continuous power: 85W

Malcolm wrote:

On 2006-02-12 04:54:51 -0500, Mogens V. said:

Anyone have experiences with power consumption on the various Mac mini models? Numbers in watt or amps, temps...

I'm considering using a mini, using a 7200rpm disk and 1GB ram, as a home server and partly workstation (reading mail/news nad browsing). It'll run dns/dhcp/mailserver/samba/http, house my documentation, mail and such..

Since it'll run 24/7, and electricity is not for free, I'm looking for somthing powpower/lownoise, while also taking up little space. I'm a bit worried about temps, mostly for the sake of keeping the disk at sufficient low temps, hence cpu temps/power has special interest.

Maximum continuous power: 85W

Yes, this is the maximum rating, but Apple doesn't state how much the three models consume when running idle and full tilt boogie. Does cpuscaling work well? How much do the scale down when idle? I'm especially interested in idle consumption on the 1.25Ghz model. The lower consumption, the better.

Mogens V. wrote:

Yes, this is the maximum rating, but Apple doesn't state how much the three models consume when running idle and full tilt boogie. Does cpuscaling work well? How much do the scale down when idle? I'm especially interested in idle consumption on the 1.25Ghz model. The lower consumption, the better.

Google found this quite easily:
<http://www.macintouch.com/macmini05.html#jan25>

There is also
<http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/02/16/apple_mac_mini/page7.html> if you trust them more.

Niels J¯rgen Kruse wrote:

Mogens V. wrote:

Yes, this is the maximum rating, but Apple doesn't state how much the three models consume when running idle and full tilt boogie. Does cpuscaling work well? How much do the scale down when idle? I'm especially interested in idle consumption on the 1.25Ghz model. The lower consumption, the better.

Google found this quite easily:
<http://www.macintouch.com/macmini05.html#jan25>

There is also
<http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/02/16/apple_mac_mini/page7.html> if you trust them more.

Facing the shame: Didn't look hard enough :) Thanks for the links. 20-25 watts idle or slow working are good enough for my purposes. A Bit difficult to match even a with S754 Turion based SFF pc.

"Mogens V." <NOSPAMmogensv@vip.cybercity.dk> writes:

Anyone have experiences with power consumption on the various Mac mini models? Numbers in watt or amps, temps...

I measured one with a Kill-o-Watt; idle it was drawing about 9 watts; sorry I don't recall the KWH for a day's use but if you have to ask, you can't afford the box...

David Lesher wrote:

"Mogens V." <NOSPAMmogensv@vip.cybercity.dk> writes:

Anyone have experiences with power consumption on the various Mac mini models? Numbers in watt or amps, temps...

I measured one with a Kill-o-Watt; idle it was drawing about 9 watts;

I guess this is the 1.42Ghz model..

sorry I don't recall the KWH for a day's use but if you have to ask, you can't afford the box...

;) but not quite true. I'll shop for a used one, because I'll void the warranty by installing 1gig and a 7200 disk anyways. I've since read some different figures. IIRC, the 1.25Ghz model should draw down to some 5 watts idle, ~20 watt running normally (whatever that is), 28 watt watching a DVD, and up to 40 watt booting an install media.

Mogens V. wrote:

I've since read some different figures. IIRC, the 1.25Ghz model should draw down to some 5 watts idle, ~20 watt running normally (whatever that is), 28 watt watching a DVD, and up to 40 watt booting an install media.

"idle" here almost certainly means sleeping, which is no good for a server.

Niels J¯rgen Kruse wrote:

Mogens V. wrote:

I've since read some different figures. IIRC, the 1.25Ghz model should draw down to some 5 watts idle, ~20 watt running normally (whatever that is), 28 watt watching a DVD, and up to 40 watt booting an install media.

"idle" here almost certainly means sleeping, which is no good for a server.

Yes and no. Dunno what idle might mean in Apple terms; elsewhere it usually doesn't mean sleeping. Idle for a homeserver isn't that bad.

Actually, I expect my server to be idle ~90-95% of the time. It's supposed to just sit there, holding my mail and docs, waiting for me to connect from work when I need it.
I do need to be able to read mail/news/web, and do a bit of programming when I'm too lazy to boot another, though.

So I might expect comsumption to be somewhere between idle and the 20 or so watts for 'normal' use.

And no, I can't use VIA Epia, should someone suggest that.