Is my 2011 mini burning unusual amounts of power?

[omvs]

I remember seeing numbers for the idle power of the mini being on the order of 10watts. However, my mini (2011, i5 2.5GHz + Radeon 6630) seems to be burning 24watts idle.

I thought maybe the discrete GPU was just burning a ton of power, but apple's page implies it should only be a couple watts more - I should be seeing ~14W
(http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3468?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US)

If I trust iStat menu, it's reporting:
CPU A: ~3w
CPU FSB: ~1w
CPU High side: ~2w
GPU 1: ~5w
Graphics Module: ~8w
Northbridge 1: 0.3w
Northbridge 2: 1.2w

DC Input: 25w

Since the DC input seems to equal the sum of the components, I'm guessing GPU 1 and Graphics Module are separate draws, so I'm showing ~13w going to my GPU. I am not pushing the GPU especially hard - only have 2D programs running. I do have dual heads, but unlpugging one doesn't seem to impact the power draw (unlike my 2011 iMac where the 2nd head add +30w!)

Are others seeing this level of idle power with the 6630? Or is my system acting strange?

Thanks!

 

[paulrbeers]

I'm not sure how much I would trust iStat. If you are really concerned about how much power your mini is using, then get a Killawatt and truly test it at the wall. I don't see how a program can have any real clue (other than some kind of estimates that it's programmer throws out) as to how much power anything is using. No review site ever uses a program to tell you how much power a computer is using, instead they rely on external physical devices to determine power usage because that's the only accurate way to know.

 

[omvs]

I'm not sure how much I would trust iStat. If you are really concerned about how much power your mini is using, then get a Killawatt and truly test it at the wall.

My Killawatt and iStat both agree that total power is ~25w. I don't know if I believe the breakdown wattage, but the total is tracking.