When buying a Mac Pro (Late 2013) Review Power Needs

[lostraxx]

I had not upgraded my Mac Mini for 10 years and finally forced to up my game because I know I will have to go to 10.14 at some time in the future for my development work. I do some video editing for myself on the side, and also some FileMaker Pro development. While upgrading for FileMaker is simply for the OS version support, I was tired of waiting 50 minutes in iMovie for a 10min file save in 540p. Now it is 2 minutes in 720p. It saves lower quality files slower!

Looked at all the Mac alternatives and my budget allowed for a pretty much unused Mac Pro 2013 6 Core D-500 GPUs, 32GB RAM, 480GB SSD, $1800 delivered. Why not an iMac, MacBook Pro or Mac mini? Nothing with a built in monitor, because the last 30 years working in and around computers, monitors are the weakest link, after mechanical hard drives. When my monitor dies at 8pm on a Saturday night and people are paying me to deliver Monday, I just have to drive a few miles to BestBuy and I am back in business. I wanted a different form factor than the Mini too.

Well, first thing I noticed is my battery backup unit chattering like an old manual typewriter on speed, from time to time, plus room lights flashing here and there too. Thought my old backup unit had been fried by lightning in MO, so ordered a new one, same same.

Before it arrived I found out how my little mobile home was powered, what circuits carried what amperage and where they ran and what all my computing gear and kitchen appliance drew. Thought I was OK with a 250w backup unit just for the Pro and my old 225w for all my other low power items, except the laser printer, as I saw the Pro rated at 46w and 243w max cpu draw.

Well that didn't end well. I did further research, some on this site and found out that the Pro can draw almost 500w when flat out like a lizard drinking as we say back home - 234w Max CPUs, 60W for 6 x Thunderbolt ports, 18w for 4 x USB ports, 80w for 2xGPUs.

Corner case? Nope. Safari, iTunes, Final Cut Pro X importing video from Camcorder, Mercalli SAL Mac OS X Running Stabilization Fix...Activity Monitor showed all 12 cores max and both GPUs (unevenly) working away...

So just ordered my new 500 battery backup.

 

[AidenShaw]

See https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ups-recommendation-for-late-2013-mac-pro.2142445/

The consensus there was for around 1000 VA (you need to power your monitor as well).

Also note that many UPS systems are rated in VA - typically the wattage rating is much lower than the VA rating. A 1000 VA system might be rated at as little as 600 watts - a 500 VA as little as 300 watts. Don't assume that the "big number" in the description is watts.

Note that there are disagreements in that thread about the advantages of "sine wave" vs "approximate sine wave", with several anecdotes and links that support the idea that modern PFC power supplies might not like square wave or approximate sine wave UPS systems.

Another reason to get a larger UPS system is to get longer runtimes under battery. At max load, lower end UPS systems may only provide a couple of minutes of runtime. A larger unit can give tens of minutes of runtime. APC has runtime calculators on their site, so you can size a unit for the length of power outage that you want to withstand. (I have a 1500 VA APC unit on my 40 watt TiVo - it can run for 2½ hours on battery - enough to finish taping a movie.)

I'd seriously consider ordering a 1000 VA or 1500 VAsystem and returning the 500.