mac mini 2018 Power consumption

[mayuka]

Hi all,

Apple hasn't updated their page on power consumption (yet).

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201897

One great thing about the mac mini 2014 was that it had very low idle consumption - which made it perfect for a small server setup.

Can we already speculate what the power consumption of the new mac mini 2018 is? Based on the thermal output (BTU) and the specs of the processors the idle consumption would be down to 15W (from 6W) which would make the energy costs twice or three times more expensive...

 

[bigfatipod]

I did find it interesting that power consumption was not highlighted. This certainly doesn't mean much until we see the real numbers, but I'm wondering if it did go up a little this cycle.

 

[StellarVixen]

CPUs with 65W TDP are certainly gonna use up more power. Both when idle and when under load.

 

[mayuka]

Any approximate values or wild guesses possible?

As there are i3 CPUs out there with 4 cores and just 4 threads, can we rule them out?

 

[twalk]

For an i3? It'll be likely around 2W sleep, 8W idle, 30-45W during typical usage, and 60-75W under really heavy load. (Note that TPD is usually not the max)

 

[now i see it]

Apple always made a comment (like they were boasting) in the past about the Mac mini being the most energy efficient desktop they've ever made- and this year no comment about energy efficiency at all. So it's safe to say that the quad core i3 in the 2018 mini sucks more juice than the dual core CPU in the previous model.

 

[strawbale]

For an i3? It'll be likely around 2W sleep, 8W idle, 30-45W during typical usage, and 60-75W under really heavy load. (Note that TPD is usually not the max)

I was given figures (by https://www.atlastsolutions.com) for real usage testing of the 8100/8500/8700 35W T-versions they use: 8100T (3.1GHz) idle was slighter higher (at 13W) at idle than the 8500T (2.1/3.5GHz) and 8700T (2.4/4.0GHz), which they explained by the higher base frequency. Max power draw was lowest for i3 and highest for i7 (but still only 54W). BTW, these PCs are fanless, with heatpipes and heatsink, and their was no throttling at sustained 100% CPU loads. Would have been nice to have a Mac Mini equivalent..

So with the higher base frequencies for the 65W versions in the Mac Mini (i3/i5/i7 = 3.6/3.0/3.2) I'm guessing around 15W at idle?