Choice of MBP regarding existing power supplies

[Cooper27]

Hello everyone hoping some advice will help my decision. Debating 14" or 16" MBP purchase. I would prefer the 16" but I do have many 96 watt OWC thunderbolt docks and chargers in my set up. The 16" requires 140watts, but can it be run off a lower 96w power supply without issues? Any users of 16"MBP with lower power supplies your thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[DarkPremiumCho]

I have been using my M1 Max with 18W, 65W and 140W USB PD power suppliers. No problems at all. My workloads are not that demanding.

So I think the answer would be yes, unless your computer's compute power is continuously being utilized to its maximum capacity.

 

[Cooper27]

I have been using my M1 Max with 18W, 65W and 140W USB PD power suppliers. No problems at all. My workloads are not that demanding.

So I think the answer would be yes, unless your computer's compute power is continuously being utilized to its maximum capacity.

Thanks for the feedback. It will be in clamshell most of the time at 96w.

 

[dmccloud]

With the M-series Macs, any laptop can be run off as little as a 30W adapter. I'm sure someone has even run the MBA off the 20W USB-C adapter as well, but I wouldn't recommend going below 30W just to minimize battery stress. If you open a Terminal and type the following into Terminal:

 sudo powermetrics

You can check what the power draw is for the system as a whole, in addition to specifically by the CPU and GPU cores. I use a tool called asitop to present that information in a graphical format.



Keeping either version of that tool running can give you an idea of what your peak power draw actually is, so you could better pick a smaller/alternate charger for your Mac.

 

[Cooper27]

With the M-series Macs, any laptop can be run off as little as a 30W adapter. I'm sure someone has even run the MBA off the 20W USB-C adapter as well, but I wouldn't recommend going below 30W just to minimize battery stress. If you open a Terminal and type the following into Terminal:

 sudo powermetrics

You can check what the power draw is for the system as a whole, in addition to specifically by the CPU and GPU cores. I use a tool called asitop to present that information in a graphical format.

View attachment 2208052

Keeping either version of that tool running can give you an idea of what your peak power draw actually is, so you could better pick a smaller/alternate charger for your Mac.

This is great, thanks for your feedback. I use istat menus which has lots of the info you mention in 'asitop'. Great to hear that you can run a lower power supply with no issues.

 

[iMacDragon]

The 140W is mostly to allow for full power delivery and charging whilst fully loaded, or fast charging. In typical usage scenarios without lots of power hungry stuff on usb ports, 96W is enough for full processor usage, and for anything but extended full load scenarios, 45-60w is fine, and 30w is enough for casual use.

 

[Cooper27]

The 140W is mostly to allow for full power delivery and charging whilst fully loaded, or fast charging. In typical usage scenarios without lots of power hungry stuff on usb ports, 96W is enough for full processor usage, and for anything but extended full load scenarios, 45-60w is fine, and 30w is enough for casual use.

Many thanks. D