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Mac Studio Power Consumption
- Thread starter Miguel Cunha
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It would all depend on what your doing.
CPU intensive tasks like rendering etc will obviously use more power.
Looking at the tech specs, I would say 370 is for top spec ultra model.
At a guess I would say general use no more than 150-200w (Edit after post above: maybe even less). Which is less than just my GPU in my MacPro.......
edit: found this
![httpswww.apple.comenvironmentpdfproductsdesktopsMac_Studio_PER_March2022.pdf.png]( "httpswww.apple.comenvironmentpdfproductsdesktopsMac_Studio_PER_March2022.pdf.png")
CPU intensive tasks like rendering etc will obviously use more power.
Looking at the tech specs, I would say 370 is for top spec ultra model.
At a guess I would say general use no more than 150-200w (Edit after post above: maybe even less). Which is less than just my GPU in my MacPro.......
edit: found this
Last edited:
full load (Handbrake video encoding):
taken from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/mac-studio-review-a-nearly-perfect-workhorse-mac/
![Mac-Studio-review.010-1440x1080.png]( "Mac-Studio-review.010-1440x1080.png")
taken from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/mac-studio-review-a-nearly-perfect-workhorse-mac/
It's purely a guess.
Have a look through the many reviews
www.macrumors.com
They may look at power consumption.
Have a look through the many reviews
Mac Studio Reviews: Faster Than a $13,000 Mac Pro
Apple's all-new Mac Studio desktop computer launches this Friday. Ahead of time, the first reviews and unboxing videos for the Mac Studio have...
www.macrumors.com
They may look at power consumption.
I finally plugged in my power meter to my current 2009 Mac Pro that my Studio Max will be replacing. I leave this machine on 24/7 as I run some stuff that needs to be accessible all the time and what is crazy is that, if those figures are right, I could run my M1 Ultra Mac Studio at full load and it would still be using ~200W less than my current Mac Pro does at 'idle' (well just under 10% load). That's insane. To put it into perspective, based on the new energy prices that suppliers are putting rates to here, in the UK, drawing 200W a year 24/7 is almost £500 worth of electricity. That's quite a saving!
Mac studio will pay for itself just in power savings, impressive. I'll be upgrading from a 2012 i7 mini, its noise is really starting to drive me mad
I watched many user reviews, the highest I have seen is someone running Blender, he even has a wattage metre in through the wall socket so it is the total consumption not just the number reported by software on the SoC package. The metre never exceeded 140W and I believe it is the stock Ultra with 48 graphic cores.
That said, I struggle to accept this is the optimized final state of the Studio as it would be silly to ship a 370W PSU when it only draws 140W under load, even including Thunderbolt peripherals it is ridiculously underutilized.
That said, I struggle to accept this is the optimized final state of the Studio as it would be silly to ship a 370W PSU when it only draws 140W under load, even including Thunderbolt peripherals it is ridiculously underutilized.
A new review video is out on power consumption and thermals by max tech of the ultra and seems apple is limiting power for gpu etc.
For those of us (ME) who can't get our heads around watts-hours-cost etc.....
In layman's terms how much would 200w an hour cost you (in the UK)...?
I just looked at my UPS readout (with cMP and 27" monitor and TM drive connected) shows 195w at idle (although my Mac is not on 24/7 like yours).
Great video, that and the disassemble video. Subbed. finally someone made the effort to do some good testing. Interesting results.
For those of us (ME) who can't get our heads around watts-hours-cost etc.....
In layman's terms how much would 200w an hour cost you (in the UK)...?
I just looked at my UPS readout (with cMP and 27" monitor and TM drive connected) shows 195w at idle (although my Mac is not on 24/7 like yours).
we've just been informed that our estimated electricity bill is going to go up by about £1100 next year. I bought a second M1 Mac Mini back in August, purely on the basis of its lower power requirements compared to my old Mac Pro 5,1 (3.46GHz 12 core, 96GB RAM, 1TB PCI NVME) and it offering about the same processing power. The reduction in consumption I calculated at around £500 per year, paying for the £589 refurbed 8Gb Mini in not too long at all.
That was based on £0.172/kWh in August last year, but it seems that £0.28 is going to be the average in 2022.
Using https://www.omnicalculator.com/everyday-life/electricity-cost , 200W @ £0.172 for 24/7/365 usage is £301.55 per year, using £0.28 is £490.90. Oh and I think VAT has to be added on top (so +20%)
My Pro was using around 450W when being fully exploited, the Mini more difficult to tell due to the small number, but around 25W, saving me (at the higher current price) £1,043.15 per year (for no real loss of performance)
Sure! So to work out the cost savings of 200 watts over a year, I need to combine it with the kWh cost of my energy supplier. I recently got an email from my supplier (Bulb UK) to say my peak electricity cost was going up to 33.100 pence per kWh and my night rate to 19.793 pence per kWh. I looked it up and it looks like night rate usually applies for 10 hours and day rate for 14 hours. Using these figures, I can get an average rate:For those of us (ME) who can't get our heads around watts-hours-cost etc.....
In layman's terms how much would 200w an hour cost you (in the UK)...?
I just looked at my UPS readout (with cMP and 27" monitor and TM drive connected) shows 195w at idle (although my Mac is not on 24/7 like yours).
((33.100 x 14) + (19.793 x 10)) / 24 = 27.555 pence per kWh
The unit kWh means a power draw of 1 kW (or 1000 watts) for 1 hour so using this, I can work out the daily cost of drawing 200W for 24 hours:
(200/1000) x 27.555 x 24 = 132.264 pence per day
Then I just convert to pounds (£1.3264) and multiply by 365 to get an annual amount in pounds:
1.3264 x 365 = £482.76
So if the Mac Studio reduces my 24x7 power draw by 200W, it’ll save me almost £500 a year. I think in practice it’ll be a fair chunk higher than that as 200W less assumes it’s almost peak load. It could be more like 250W. Coupled with a new monitor to replace my 30” ACD, I might end up with up to 350W less draw 24x7 which would be over £800!
Electricity is generally charged per kilowatt-hour, so 5 hours at 200w is one kWh. if you left it on 24/7, that would be 365*24/5 = 1752 kWh per year. Avg UK electricity rates are apparently 17.2p / kWh, which would work out to about £300 per year.For those of us (ME) who can't get our heads around watts-hours-cost etc.....
In layman's terms how much would 200w an hour cost you (in the UK)...?
I just looked at my UPS readout (with cMP and 27" monitor and TM drive connected) shows 195w at idle (although my Mac is not on 24/7 like yours).
If only. That was the 2020 average rate. Prices have gone up *significantly* since then.
VAT is 5% on energy and Rishi is looking to cut it in the Spring Budget, according to many news sources today. Here's hoping! I'm locked-in until December, by which time this whole thing had best have blown over...
Exactly. In 2020 I used to pay around 0.16€/kWh (100% renewable).
This January I paid around 0.40€
2.5 times!!
ah, thanks for that, didn't realise, also wasn't sure if the average prices I was finding online were inc or ex VAT
To answer the OP, I've only got an Eve Smart Plug monitoring power usage, so it's not exactly accurate or responsive, but my total usage has gone up from around 280-300W to 370-390W after plugging my base Studio Ultra in and running 4 Handbrake threads on it (still playing and finding out what I can do with it), though just to cloud the issue slightly, I also started other single Handbrake threads on a couple of M1 Minis so the increase isn't solely down to the Studio Ultra
I like to think that Apple learnt with their previous miscalculations and are preventing to put themselves in another thermal corner, as they did with the 2013 trash can Mac Pro.
This being true, we could hope for the Mac Studio to have room to evolve and not to be simply a niche ephemeral product.
Im far from a power guy and want the theory of underpowered studio to be correct and patched
but the studio needs to be able to power all the USB-C ports adequately (15W each?): 90 Wattsplus 5 each for the two USB 3.0? So that's 100W under load. This reaches 240W.
Someone that knows this stuff please correct me.
Interesting and pertinent point.Im far from a power guy and want the theory of underpowered studio to be correct and patched
plus 5 each for the two USB 3.0? So that's 100W under load. This reaches 240W.
Someone that knows this stuff please correct me.
There are still 130 W left to reach 370.
Let’s say the giant fans take 20W (they shouldn’t but whatever). 20-40W of heat efficiency loss to the whole heatsink. Still under 300W.
I remember TB3 does have a 15W per port PD spec, but that was years ago, don’t know if this is updated for TB4 or USB4.
The other explaination is if this chassis is designed for next gen Apple Silicon as well. Kind of like how the high tier 24” iMac with 2 fans which is almost never needed for M1. Well there is a news thread on front page saying the Studio Display has 64GB SSD but only using 2GB….. maybe this is how modern Apple rolls. Build and ship more than you need, just because. lol.
I remember TB3 does have a 15W per port PD spec, but that was years ago, don’t know if this is updated for TB4 or USB4.
The other explaination is if this chassis is designed for next gen Apple Silicon as well. Kind of like how the high tier 24” iMac with 2 fans which is almost never needed for M1. Well there is a news thread on front page saying the Studio Display has 64GB SSD but only using 2GB….. maybe this is how modern Apple rolls. Build and ship more than you need, just because. lol.