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How many watts does a Dual Powermac take
- Thread starter mackaveli
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call 'um up and ask...i would like to know too....i have a dual 2.7...with an energy bill trhrough the roof!
Sun Baked said:
tehheehhe....you would probably need a whole wind farm or solar farm to power this thing....with a 19 inch viewsonic monitor!
Geez louise, yuk it up guys, don't help 'em out 
http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html
# Meets ENERGY STAR requirements
# Line voltage: 100-125V AC or 200-240V AC
# Frequency: 50Hz to 60Hz, single phase
# Maximum current: 6.5A (low-voltage range) or 7.5A (high-voltage range) for 100-125V AC, 3.5A for 200-240V AC
The maximum current would be when starting up or when the fans and processor are at 100%. I can't remember the Energy Star regs, but at idle it is somewhere down around 20W. Add the consumption of the monitor to this. A LCD screen will be way less than a large CRT.
Sustained use would be in the middle - I think the guess of 350W is pretty good for active use.
(Note: Watts = Volts x amps, so 6.5A at 120 V = 780 Watts -- that's at peak. Comparatively, this is like 8 lightbulbs or 1/2 of a space heater or a microwave.
http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html
# Meets ENERGY STAR requirements
# Line voltage: 100-125V AC or 200-240V AC
# Frequency: 50Hz to 60Hz, single phase
# Maximum current: 6.5A (low-voltage range) or 7.5A (high-voltage range) for 100-125V AC, 3.5A for 200-240V AC
The maximum current would be when starting up or when the fans and processor are at 100%. I can't remember the Energy Star regs, but at idle it is somewhere down around 20W. Add the consumption of the monitor to this. A LCD screen will be way less than a large CRT.
Sustained use would be in the middle - I think the guess of 350W is pretty good for active use.
(Note: Watts = Volts x amps, so 6.5A at 120 V = 780 Watts -- that's at peak. Comparatively, this is like 8 lightbulbs or 1/2 of a space heater or a microwave.
Mechcozmo said:
No such thing my friend. Some people pronounce the "g" in gigawatt as a "j"
Thanks for killing the joke
mackaveli said:
It is confusing, because most / all desktop computers like the PM use standard power supplies that tend to come in standard power sizes -- 240W or 350W or whatever. If you have a bigger power supply than you need, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're wasting power, though. The power supply is designed so that it can not only power the stock PM you have, but cards that you add into it, up to the full capacity of memory (8GB or whatever), powered USB and/or firewire devices, etc, etc. So I'm going to disagree slightly with CanadaRAM and say that unless your PM is really insanely maxed out with expansion hardware, it probably *never* gets anywhere near the max power capability.
CanadaRAM compared the PM to a microwave...I guess one important thing to keep in mind is that energy = power * time. So microwaves are energy saving devices, because even though they work at 1000 Watts, they run for only a few minutes a day. In contrast, your PM consumes energy at a slower rate but consumes it for a much larger part of the day.
Also, just for comparison humor, ranges of power consumption by computers... small notebook computers consume 30-60W of power when running off the wall and recharging the battery. Your PM is probably on the other end of the spectrum, consuming more power than most computers (I think that tower case Wintel PCs typically have 350-450W power supplies, and although the one in the PM is probably much farther over-specified, they probably consume somewhat less energy), although your LCD is much lower power-consumption than CRTs.