[paul@pth.com]

Hi All,

Anyone else see really high power consumptions on the 8 core Mac Pros? I've got an UPS with a built in LCD and between the 8 core and the 30" display they sucking up very close to 500W while idle. I think the 30" sucks up "only" 80W, so that leaves 410-420W just for the Mac Pro. Anyone else seeing this high power usage on the 8 core machines?

Wouldn't bother me so much if the machine would just sleep when its supposed to, but that's a problem for another post.

[Tenacious Dyl]

(Assuming that a power supply doesn't always use the power its capacity is noted as, and that the more you plug into a computer, the more power she'll use up...)

Do you have lots of extras inside the machine? 2 optical drives, all 4 hard drives, extra PCI-Express cards? Hard drives will suck 10-20 watts a piece, I'm not sure about optical (if they suck any power when not in use... above a watt?), and it certainly depends on which graphic(s) card you have, and other PCI-Express cards.

How about other little extras that need power, do you have wi-fi going all the time, bluetooth on and "discoverable", and do you have any usb bus powered or firewire bus powered devices connected?

[mduell]

The 30" ACD can consume up to 150W... try unplugging it to see what just the Mac Pro uses.

300-450W 'at the wall' at idle sounds about right depending on system configuration. When did you buy your Mac Pro? The newer 65nm G0 stepping quad Xeons cut idle power consumption in half compared to the launch 65nm B3 stepping quads (25W vs 50W per CPU), but I'm not sure when or if Apple switched to the newer stepping.

[ewrhkg]

Yea, that's about right. When I check on my UPC, it reads about high 400s to 560s watt. I have 4 hds in the 8 cores mac pro and a 30" dell.