I thought the same thing when I saw that, especially when compared to the iMac. That's probably base spec too. Doesn't the 4970 draw a lot more power than the stock card? Can't imagine what it gets up to with multiple hard drives.
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How many of you Mac Pro owners sleep your beast at night or turn off monitor?
- Thread starter jjahshik32
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I thought the same thing when I saw that, especially when compared to the iMac. That's probably base spec too. Doesn't the 4970 draw a lot more power than the stock card? Can't imagine what it gets up to with multiple hard drives.
I'm strongly inclined to think they have it wrong. 11W in sleep? I might believe 0.5W or 1W, but 11W? Doesn't sound right to me.
I don't know the sleep operation well enough to judge, but the mac pro uses about 10 times the power of any other system from apple when sleeping
Ok. I have the 2.66 Quad Nehalem with 4 hdd (1 Caviar blue, 2 greens and 1 black) with the ati 4870 card. I noticed this weird thing today. When I sleep the MP, the power goes down to 0 W and after 5 or 6 sec the power goes up to 6W and fluctuates from 5 to 6W (using a killawatt meter) also, the current is 0.12A. None of my hdd seem to be turned on (I touched them and didn't feel the normal vibration that you get from a running hdd). I tried removing peripherals and got the same result with just the monitor cable plugged in (but turned off), everything else removed (keyboard, mouse, external hdd)
The PF drops from 0.98 to 0.04 when it just goes to sleep and comes up to 0.4 when it stabilizes at 6W (14VA, 120V, 0.12A)
So, don't know what is going on here.
I sleep my Mac Pro when I'm not using it - I used to always leave it on and our electrical bill was about $280/mo. When I started sleeping it the bill dropped immediately to about $140. I have too much stuff to keep rebooting - Emacs, Xcode, 6 Terminal windows, a couple with several tabs, a CentOS5 64-bit VM for Linux development, an Ubuntu Server 9.04 instance (for building EC2 deployable .deb packages), openocd, usually lots of PDF docs up (mainly chip data sheets), screen(1)'s connected to USB/RS232 adapter used for consoles for embedded devices, frequently a WinXP instance running Bitscope software, OpenOCD, etc, etc. I'm loathe to reboot more than once a month even to install software updates that require a restart. So definitely a no on rebooting, but sleeping is an easy way to save a buck or two on utilities.
You have never had a spinning beach ball that wouldn't quit in 5+ years?
I have had my MP for 3 months and I have had this happen many times - I think mostly because of Time Machine.
I shut mine down at night. I tried sleeping it, but sometimes, I'd come home and it would be running, having turned itself on.
Just yesterday, I came home, and it was on with a message on the screen saying it was running on UPS power and would shut down shortly. There must have been a power outage while it was sleeping, but that somehow woke it up. I'm still trying to figure that out.
Just yesterday, I came home, and it was on with a message on the screen saying it was running on UPS power and would shut down shortly. There must have been a power outage while it was sleeping, but that somehow woke it up. I'm still trying to figure that out.
I have exact same lamp from IKEA.
I turn my Mac Pro off every night unless I'm downloading something through iTunes that takes a while (HD videos) or rendering something.
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USB devices can wake it. If your UPS is on USB it almost certainly woke it on the power failure or when the charge got low. Probably the former since few people still think of desktops as something put to sleep, so it's unlikely the UPS maker considered it. At some point the computer needs to do a clean shutdown so eventually it needs to be woken.
Some USB devices also cause problems with sleep. When I upgraded to Snow Leopard it would wake immediately when put to sleep. Turned out to be a USB-to-RS232 adapter that wasn't plugged into anything on the RS232 end. I unplugged it and that solved the problem.
I sleep it over here.
Sleep actually works well on a Mac.
I was a little concerned because the MP1.1 had a reputation for crashing a UPS when coming out of sleep, but I got a SmartUPS 1500 and it hasn't been a problem.
Sleep and wakeup is very fast and unobtrusive so why not use it? I have to pay the electric bill after all.
Have Fun,
Keri
Sleep actually works well on a Mac.
I was a little concerned because the MP1.1 had a reputation for crashing a UPS when coming out of sleep, but I got a SmartUPS 1500 and it hasn't been a problem.
Sleep and wakeup is very fast and unobtrusive so why not use it? I have to pay the electric bill after all.
Have Fun,
Keri
Cool, thanks for the info! You're right, the computer is plugged into the UPS via USB cable. I'd forgotten about that. You explained it perfectly.
Well it's certainly not stock in there but I definitely don't use it at even close to full-capacity very often. 80% of the time it is way more muscle than I need but I love having it for that 20% of the time. I <3 that machine, even if it is possibly possessed.
What speakers are those in the pic?
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