Do you turn the Mac mini off?

I have set my Mini to sleep after 20 minutes of inactivity. I turn it off if I am going to be away for more than a day or two, which is rare these days. I occasionally do a restart, maybe once in a month or two, if I have not been away for a bit.......

In the past couple of years I have not been further than a couple of hundred km from where I live. I have off the 50 km long by 20 km wide island I live on only about 4 times in that time......!

Put it in sleep. When electronics are turned on there's a certain stress in the circuitry, however it might not be significant.

Other equipment is better to leave them on forever. Particle accelerators are turned down a few times a year but most of the time they're on. One answer I got once was—if we turned down we're not sure it'll work again.

I put my mini to sleep. The only time I shut it down, or any of my other computers, is when I'm not going to be home for an extended period of time.

My 2011 mini never gets turned off. If it doesn't have anyone at the keyboard, it's put in sleep mode. It serves out my media library to the rest of the household, so shutting it off does not compute with me. Going to stay that way for now, until I can find the time one of these weekends to get my Plex-on-Synology issues resolved (thinking right now that I may need to convert my media into a more client friendly format. If so, that's not going to be fun or quick with 1.7TB of data.)

mrsir2009 said:

With more modern Macs you can plug the iPhone in when the computer is already awake, then sleep it and the charging will continue. It just won’t charge if you plug it in when the computer is already asleep.

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I double checked just now and if I put the PB into sleep I hear the disconnect bleep from the iPhone and again when getting out of sleep.

Good Apple changed the above behaviour, it did not make any sense not to charge.


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As for the Mini, I don't have one but I would leave it on as well, the same I do with my Powerbook, just let it sleep and restart once in a while, I need to do this since there's not much RAM inside.

BUT, on the other hand I really dislike wasting energy so I am a bit uncertain what to do.
If we all (6 Billion of us) would waste 1 watt an hour that is already a fairly big Power plant just for waste! (6 GW)

If you use Synergy on the Mini with no KB plugged in (aka a client), can it be woken up when it is asleep from the Synergy host?

palebluedot said:

If you use Synergy on the Mini with no KB plugged in (aka a client), can it be woken up when it is asleep from the Synergy host?

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There is a setting in Energy saver.
(This on 10.5.8, yours might be different.)

All my computers (and associated peripherals) are connected to power strips, which are in turn connected to the wall outlets.

At night (or any other time when they will be unused for anything more than a short time) I shut them down, and then turn the power strips off.

There's something to be said for a "fresh start" every morning!

ibizan said:

Energy savings aside, what about long-term wear on the drives (both platters and SSDs) when one consistently shuts down vs. sleeps the machine?

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Sleep is basically the same as turning the machine off except that the RAM stays powered, so when you wake the computer up again you can start using it within a second or two instead of waiting for contents of RAM to be restored (or for the system to be booted completely and having to re-open all your programs and files).

So if you think turning the hard drive off/on a lot is bad for it, then you should avoid turning the computer off OR allowing it to sleep since they're basically the same.

But, all modern hard drives are designed to power cycle at least a few thousand times so turning them off/on shouldn't be a big deal. This goes more than doubly so for the small laptop hard drive in the Mini, since laptop drives are designed to power cycle 10+ TIMES as much as desktop hard drives, since it's assumed that laptops will be opened/closed pretty frequently and they may spin hard drives down to save power.

Power cycling an SSD shouldn't be a big deal since it's all solid state.

lamerica80 said:

LOL turning off the computer every night is such an old PC thing to do. My parents still do that.

The power consumption during sleep mode is barely measurable.

I only turn if off if im leaving for vacation for a week. Oh wait..I dont.

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Maybe your parents have actually paid an electricity bill or two.

There's a billion people with that attitude, enjoy the extra mercury in your Sushi, you deserve it.

Larry-K said:

Maybe your parents have actually paid an electricity bill or two.

There's a billion people with that attitude, enjoy the extra mercury in your Sushi, you deserve it.

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And I suppose you unplug your TV when you're not watching it?

A TV waiting for a signal from a remote control will use roughly as much power as a Mini in sleep mode.

Powering-off or restarting a Mac every day or two frees-up RAM that is tied-up and hasn't been released by the OS. When I leave my Macs running 24/7 sooner or later they slow-down because of insufficient RAM. (And I have more RAM than the stock amount...)

I usually turn my Macs off at night unless I am doing a huge data upload to CrashPlan. I use the Energy Saver preference pane scheduling option so my Mac is running when I get to my office in the morning.

Minis don't use much power when in sleep mode but it all adds-up with the millions of devices running in standby mode. Unless you are running a server there is simply no reason to leave a computer running 24/7.

It's a shame that our "instant gratification" culture encourages folks to ignore the small things we do that added together have a significant impact on our environment.

Mojo1 said:

Powering-off or restarting a Mac every day or two frees-up RAM that is tied-up and hasn't been released by the OS. When I leave my Macs running 24/7 sooner or later they slow-down because of insufficient RAM. (And I have more RAM than the stock amount...)

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I have a hard time believing this. How are you determining that your computer slows down due to insufficient RAM? It's pretty difficult. You'd have to go to the "System Memory" section of Activity Monitor and carefully track the how the "Page ins" and "Page outs" numbers change day-to-day. You'd need pencil and paper and a calculator, or a spreadsheet or something and I doubt you've done this.

I think any slowdowns you're seeing are due to either your imagination or you use some poorly written software that suffers from memory leaks and you would do just as well just closing and re-opening that specific program, instead of turning your entire computer off and back on again.

Personally I don't reboot my Mini for weeks (sometimes months) at a time and it works fine. No slowdowns.

Mojo1 said:

Powering-off or restarting a Mac every day or two frees-up RAM that is tied-up and hasn't been released by the OS. When I leave my Macs running 24/7 sooner or later they slow-down because of insufficient RAM. (And I have more RAM than the stock amount...).

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I'm calling you out on this one. The only time I have seen slow downs on a DAILY basis would be when I do not have enough RAM. If I have enough, then the need to reboot on a daily basis is nill. It certainly isn't needed on a daily basis. Heck my Mac Pro is on 24/7 since it does a lot of media sharing as well as television recordings and the only time it gets rebooted is when I am doing some kind of upgrade or a system update. It never slows down.

Mojo1 said:

It's a shame that our "instant gratification" culture encourages folks to ignore the small things we do that added together have a significant impact on our environment.

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As previously pointed out, Apple states that the difference between Turned off vs standby is 1w/hr. However, the amount of time the computer would use being turned on (which causes a LOT of disk usage as well as processor usage) could be in the 60 w/hr usage. If it takes your computer 2 minutes to fully boot up that means you "wasted" 2 w/hr. Further, (especially lately), OSX takes about another minute of heavy disk activity (so another 1w/hr lost). That's 3 whole hours of "sleep" mode difference. What's my point? Turning on and off won't save you that much since you lose a lot of energy efficiency shutting down and turning your computer on (completely lost productivity time since you can't use your computer during those 3 minutes).

* these are theoretical numbers, but are used to make my point that there are losses in power efficiency by booting up and shutting down.

And how many watt hours of effort will I have to waste providing you with sufficient justification that will satisfy you? (If that is even a possibility...)

Mojo1 said:

And how many watt hours of effort will I have to waste providing you with sufficient justification that will satisfy you? (If that is even a possibility...)

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Well it would at least require you to give at least some thought instead of just some snarky response. While I agree that over an 8 hour period (assuming you sleep 8 hours a day) the difference in power usage (factoring in the 3w/hr you lose by turning your mini on and off) would net you 5w/hr in saving, I contend there are a much larger gains to be had by concentrating on other more heavy power draw devices in your house. For example, my old Kenwood Home theater receiver drew 50w of power whether "turned off" or left on per hour. That's 10 nights of the mini on PER HOUR I save by putting it on a power strip and turning the power off at the strip. Combining that receiver, with my sub, television, DVD Player, etc., they were all drawing almost 100 w/hr! I'd say I'm doing my part....

I bet you have devices around your house that are probably drawing 5w/hr at all times that you could unplug/turn off that would equate to a whole night's worth of Mini power usage in sleep......

motrek said:

And I suppose you unplug your TV when you're not watching it?

A TV waiting for a signal from a remote control will use roughly as much power as a Mini in sleep mode.

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TV, that's funny.

why after a while of being paused mac mini white light stops flashing?

When this is flashing is on pause when it gets off is Sleep?

The MBP is always blinking.

I don t understand.

My mini is on 24/7. 60 days now without a restart, no slowing down at all. Using it during the day for internet and mail, during the night it's encoding movies and series with handbrake.

Off. Electricity is two-three times US prices here (Sydney), not to mention a constant 60/c "administrative" charge that pushes the bill up. Some families here pay $500+ a quarter for a standard house. This was one of the main reasons to switch to a mini too - lower idle and usage power.

pine88 said:

Off. Electricity is two-three times US prices here (Sydney), not to mention a constant 60/c "administrative" charge that pushes the bill up. Some families here pay $500+ a quarter for a standard house. This was one of the main reasons to switch to a mini too - lower idle and usage power.

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Then, they are the lucky ones (or frugal to a fault) My annual bill for last year was almost $3500, and it's not getting any cheaper.

Nevertheless, I only switch my Mini (along with all else) off in storms.

pine88 said:

Off. Electricity is two-three times US prices here (Sydney), not to mention a constant 60/c "administrative" charge that pushes the bill up. Some families here pay $500+ a quarter for a standard house. This was one of the main reasons to switch to a mini too - lower idle and usage power.

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If you are super concerned about power consumption you would probably do better with something like a MacBook Air rather than a Mac Mini. I haven't plugged my Mini into my Kill-A-Watt but I believe my 2010 11" Air takes ~15W when idle with the screen at half brightness. Pretty amazing that it only needs a small fraction of the power of a typical incandescent light bulb.

As somebody mentioned earlier, the Mini takes 1-2W when it's sleeping (vs. presumably basically 0 when it's off). There are only 720 hours in a month, meaning you will likely use 1 kWh by leaving your Mini in sleep mode for the whole time. My power costs ~10 cents per kWh... even if your power costs 10x as much, that's still $1 per month. Like I said in an earlier post, many TVs use more power when they are "off", i.e., waiting for a signal from a remote to turn on. A Mini in sleep mode should be pretty low on your list of things to eliminate when you're looking to reduce your power bill...

I just push the powerbutton to put it in sleep instead of actually turning it off.

allows my Mac Mini to be instant on whenever I need it.

I only time it gets turned off (or rather restarted) is when I installed some new hardware / software.

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motrek said:

There are only 720 hours in a month, meaning you will likely use 1 kWh by leaving your Mini in sleep mode for the whole time. My power costs ~10 cents per kWh... even if your power costs 10x as much, that's still $1 per month.

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nice explanation. that's basically €1,- a year.

I leave mine on 24/7 - it's my iTunes server, DVD ripper, handbrake machine, and when it's not doing that it's BOINCing.

And it uses less energy than a lightbulb.

rbrian said:

I leave mine on 24/7 - it's my iTunes server, DVD ripper, handbrake machine, and when it's not doing that it's BOINCing.

And it uses less energy than a lightbulb.

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a light bulb is a great item to use in this discussion. buy a cfl turn it on and off 10 or 12 times a day and it will die in under 2 years buy a cfl turn it on and off 1 time each day and it will last 6 to 8 years.

BTW I know a person that unplugs and or uses power strips to turn off everything in his home. He only has his refrigerator and his furnace powered on 24/7. His power bill is about 35-40 usd a month. I am lucky to have a power bill under 500 usd each month since I started bit coin mining!

But before you all start saying that I am melting the ice caps.

My home heating bill was reduced 150 a month with the bitcoin mining. I have tried to figure out the carbon impact of less heating fuel burned vs more electrical use and my power company does not provide me with info on how they make the power. If it was all hydro power it would be helpful. If it was all coal it would not be helpful. since my company uses coal , natural gas and nuke I really do not know if I help or hurt. I do know I make money doing it and I have a low fuel car with that money so I hope it is better rather then worse. Come april or may the bit coins will be shut down.