Increased power draw going up to 480w from 370w

[AppleFeller]

Was looking into the different Mac Studio specs and discovered that peak power draw is going up. Also notable the M3 Ultra model is 2 pounds heavier at 8 vs 6 for the M4 Max model. That cannot just be a bigger heatsink so I wonder if they simply had to fit a higher wattage power system on the new Ultra model this time as M3 power draw was simply higher vs M1/M2 counter parts. The same way M4 is also I believe under load at least. I have to wonder what noise levels will be and if it will no longer be silent under load as prior models.

 

[Apple8and6]

Higher electricity bills I guess (sigh....)😅

 

[MarkC426]

More CPU/GPU power = more wattage.
I imagine there is a limit on the efficiency cores that Apple can achieve, without compromising performance.

M2 Ultra - 16p/8e cores 192GB ram
M3 Ultra - 20p/8e cores 512GB ram

Max wattage will be for a maxed out system.
Where the M3U now supports 512 rather than 192 ram, and has 4 more performance cores.

370/16 cores = 23w
480/20 cores = 24w

 

[picpicmac]

M3 Ultra model is 2 pounds heavier at 8 vs 6 for the M4 Max model.

The atomic weight of copper is much higher than that of aluminum.

 

[galad]

That's the limit of the power supply, it's not what the SoC will use. Someone will have to actually test the new Mac Studio to see what's the actual energy usage.

 

[AppleFeller]

The atomic weight of copper is much higher than that of aluminum.

You think they’d just give each model the best possible heat sink regardless. Seems like these days Apple like so many others are cost optimizing their products to be as cheap as possible to produce each variant.

 

[JSRinUK]

I’m not electrically-minded but how much of that increased wattage is because of the chip/cooling and how much is because of the potential of having to power numerous external TB5 devices with all those ports?

It’d be a bit silly if the power supply was just for the chip/cooling and it had nothing left to power an external HDD or two.

 

[MarkC426]

I’m not electrically-minded but how much of that increased wattage is because of the chip/cooling and how much is because of the potential of having to power numerous external TB5 devices with all those ports?

It’d be a bit silly if the power supply was just for the chip/cooling and it had nothing left to power an external HDD or two.

As you say and also @galad, 480w would be the top spec Ultra with max ram, max internal storage, and every port connected to something (probably with a bit of wattage to spare), and running at max processing.

 

[Sappharad]

Thunderbolt 5 ports allow up to 140W of power delivery when Thunderbolt 4 only offered 100W. This is likely to be the main reason the power supply is boosted because they need to be able to push out 200W of additional power across all 5 ports if devices need it.

I would not be surprised if idle power consumption is slightly decreased compared to previous models since they're moving to the 3nm chips.

 

[MarkC426]

Compared to a 2019Mp at 1.4kw max, Studio is still very energy efficient.

 

[picpicmac]

Seems like these days Apple like so many others are cost optimizing their products to be as cheap as possible to produce each variant.

Copper is a semi-precious metal and there is no reason to use it when something else works just as well.

Aluminum is now cheaper (though long ago it was not), because most aluminum is recycled.

Silver is even better than copper... so should we want all heat sinks to be made of silver?

 

[AppleFeller]

Compared to a 2019Mp at 1.4kw max, Studio is still very energy efficient.

Man I forgot how that thing was power hungry haha, new Studio is incredible!

 

[splifingate]

there is no reason to use it

Every reason, it seems

 

[Chancha]

Thunderbolt 5 ports allow up to 140W of power delivery when Thunderbolt 4 only offered 100W. This is likely to be the main reason the power supply is boosted because they need to be able to push out 200W of additional power across all 5 ports if devices need it.

I would not be surprised if idle power consumption is slightly decreased compared to previous models since they're moving to the 3nm chips.

I believe the 140W and 100W are respectively concerned with power delivery to the host, so charging a MacBook for example. Then for the peripheral ports on a host, the maximum power per port is only 15W. This was the wattage for the TB3/4 generation, I am unsure if TB5 has raised that, but never heard this being talked about so probably not.

So the Mac Studio, old or new, is only supposed to guarantee 90W total for the 6 type-C ports. (though the Apple Silicon Macs are known to have trouble providing power when more than 2 bus powered devices are asking from the pool, but this is another topic).

 

[Ifti]

So how much would a M4 Max Studio need to run? I know it depends on connected external devices etc, but lets assume no connected devices - both in idle or light usage, and at max?

 

[Chancha]

Idle consumption is always detailed in the product's environmental report:

https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/desktops/Mac_Studio_PER_March2025.pdf

For real life max draw, you need some real owner who measures from socket.