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What do you do with your Mac Pro? (Voting Poll)

What do you do with your MacPro before you go to sleep?

  • Total voters
    121
macpro00

macpro00

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 7, 2016
83
7
curious to see what fellow community members do with their Mac Pro before he/she goes to bed.
 
It just stays on -- it's running linux and suspend doesn't work too well, the nouveau driver seems to have a kind of fit. Fortunately the cMP likes staying up, and it sucks a lot less power than the old Sun Ultra 60 used to...
 
I used to leave it on, but I moved most of its server functionality off to a NAS that stays on all the time. Now I usually shut it off. It doesn't stay asleep particularly well, and because I dual boot, I don't always know whic OS I'm going to want when I do come back.
 
Same here, I have my Synology clone handling all the stuff I used to keep my Mac Pro on for. It's far more power efficient. Now, I set it to go to sleep after a few minutes of inactivity. I also set the screensaver to come on quite aggressively to avoid IPS panel burn-in.
 
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pastrychef said:
I have a related question... Which of the three options listed helps prolong the life of the power supply the most?
Click to expand...
Probably "leave it on 24/7".

The power surges when it powers up are stressful on the PS and on the electronics. How many times has it happened to you (or you've heard) "I shut it down to move it, and it won't turn back on" or similar things?
 
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pastrychef said:
Wouldn't letting it sleep alleviate that stress?
Click to expand...
Sleep sends standby power to the RAM and NIC (and power switch). The main power supply circuits are off, and will surge when you power up.

The 12v circuits (the major power rails) are off during sleep.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1659537?start=0&tstart=0

Larry from VA Aug 11, 2008 5:15 PM
in response to Bobbbo
I recently measured mine with a "Watts up?" device. The computer itself measures 7.8 watts sleeping. The I measured at the input to the UPS = 30 watts. Connected to the UPS is a cable modem, LinkSys router and the 23" ACD in sleep mode.

Idle run mode measured 172 watts for the computer and 228 watts measured at the input to the UPS. Idle running power factor measured around .9, not too shabby for a computer!

Mac Pro startup or wake-up from sleep draws around 10-11 amps very very briefly at a low enough power factor that the startup peak watts measured 269 from startup and 222 waking from sleep.
Click to expand...

Note: "...wake-up from sleep draws around 10-11 amps very very briefly..."
 
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What do you do with your MacPro before you go to sleep?

I read to it! :p
Mac Book.png

 
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I let mine sleep when it's not in use.

But that hasn't happened for over 10 years. So... it's powered on 24/7. And has been actively working that way for 10+ years.

It's always doing something.

The only times it's ever been turned off is to perform hardware upgrades, or when I've moved to another house.

It's been a great workhorse.
 
I mostly put it to sleep, sometimes I shutdown once a week or fortnight

Sometimes it depends how many unsaved text docs or other stuff I have opened - pain to save notes etc...

If I know I won't be using it for a while i.e. On Saturday when I'd be watching lots of premier league soccer I shut down.
 
Weirdos! I shut it down, i don't mind waiting 15-20 seconds for it to boot up each morning...

Obviously for me, it's a workstation and not a server.

PCIe audio cards stop sleep working and/or cause instability anyway
 
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I used to just sleep it. But I have an aux power supply for my GPU now so to avoid issues I power them both off when not needed.
 
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