New Mac Pro Uses 68% Less Energy, 74% Less Aluminum Than Previous Generation

[wikiverse]

I wanted to address all of the comments that state that the need for external peripherals undoes any energy savings in the Mac Pro. That's not necessarily true. Yes, there will be some Pro stations that are individually attached to a large external storage array. For individuals running their own Mac Pro, power consumption may creep up back to the levels of the old box.

But that's not the only use case. A large number of Mac Pros that go out are used as nodes in a render farm, and that's where these energy savings are going to add up. Those setups are already using NAS anyway, so the price for external storage is already being incurred. But using less than 50% of the power per compute node compared to the old boxes -- the savings will quickly add up there.

And even with individual workstations, there could still very well be power saving compared to the old big box. Let's say you hook up a 4 TB hard drive. It's going to draw less than 10 W at idle, and if you buy one for energy efficiency, less than 5W. Considering the new Mac Pro runs 90W lower than the previous generation at idle, you're still going to be looking at considerable savings.

It's not so much about the power savings, its about the carbon footprint and material consumption.

Making an external thunderbolt case, or PCI chassis, with cables and it's own power supply consumes more resources and produces more carbon than an internal drive using an existing computer power supply.

In this regard, the nMP is likely going to be less environmentally friendly than the old MP - particularly in regard to plastics (both for external peripherals, and their packaging).

 

[lucidmedia]

OK, just being snarky, but that pie chart looks as if its hiding something under its sumptuous wood veneer.

• Plastics
• Copper
• Aluminium & steel
• Power Supply
• Circuit boards

Now children - two of those things are not the same sort of things as the other three things - can you see what they are?


So does 'Power Supply' represent the mass of pure powersupplyium* left after you've removed all the copper, plastics, steel and aluminium from the PSU and added those to the other figures? Likewise is 'circuit board' the bare board** with all the copper, components, sockets etc. scraped off? If so what are the components soldered on with - good intentions?


*Powersupplyium is well known to cause horn rot in unicorns.

** If carelessly disposed of, pure circuitonium*** reacts with powersupplyium to form circuitonium powersupplide, which dissolves rainbows.

*** Ok, probably glass reinforced plastic in reality.

Thank you for calling out this particularly bad piece of chartjunk. Not only is it rendered in completely the wrong metaphor, but the things it is comparing do not make sense...

 

[DrManhattan]

I'd love to see comparisons to the old mac pro side by side. I wonder how much you'd save throughout the year at idle alone.

 

[lucidmedia]

But that's not the only use case. A large number of Mac Pros that go out are used as nodes in a render farm, and that's where these energy savings are going to add up.

Is this true? the nMP seems specifically designed as a user workstation, not as a node computer. A render farm of nMPs would be cost prohibitive compared to other options.

Now, if Apple designed a version of the nMP that would fit into a rack space, that would be something useful.

Like many current mac pro users, I specifically did not upgrade because of the lack of storage expandability. Factoring the additional equipment I would need to have on my desk for the nMP, I fear the power savings would be a bit of a wash.

 

[AppleScruff1]

I know I shouldn't get small when I'm drivin', but, uh, I was drivin' around the other day, you know [whistles tunefully] and a cop pulls me over. And he goes, 'Hey, are you small?' I said, 'No, I'm tall, I'm tall.'

I remember that when it first came out. He did it as a stand up routine too.

 

[anthony11]

Wow that's low energy consumption. I wonder how long it would take to recoup the cost of upgrading just from saved electricity costs?

Before one considers the electricity consumed by the disks moved to an external enclosure, or after?

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That's impressive.

Less so when the displaced storage is added back in. Few are going to be able to afford 1TB flash, or even be able to make due with that little storage. Almost everyone will plug in external TB/FW/USB disks.

 

[ElectronGuru]

People just don't recycle Macs.
I know folks that still have every mac they ever bought.

The 3 environmental R's, in descending order of value. As it relates to products:

1) Reduce - the less we use in the first place, the less of everything is needed

2) Reuse - the more that can be used of what already exists, the better

3) Recycle - last resort before virgin material, helpful for products that burn energy during use

 

[Rajani Isa]

Why is a graph that explains all of the MP materials using wood textures?

Because using solid colors goes against the grain.

 

[calaverasgrande]

The 3 environmental R's, in descending order of value. As it relates to products:

1) Reduce - the less we use in the first place, the less of everything is needed

2) Reuse - the more that can be used of what already exists, the better

3) Recycle - last resort before virgin material, helpful for products that burn energy during use

it's usually listed as reduce, recycle, reuse.
if it's going to be re-used, it doesn't matter what it is made of.
I'd actually say that people seem to have a reticence to dispose of Apple products in general. It comes from the fetishisation of apple stuff I guess. I certainly dont see people making fishtanks or such out of HP towers.

 

[cinealta]

Of course. It doesn't have to power 4 SATA2 bays, 2 optical bays and 4 PCIe slots!

They are actually quoting the amount of aluminum used? That's like saying a coke can uses less aluminum than a Boeing 747. Seriously?

Can you say Analogy 101?

 

[blanka]

Sorry, but the power consumption is actually pretty bad.
I mean, come on!
A 2011 Mini has an idle consumption of 11 watt, even for the quad i7. And that is a 2 year old 32nm machine.
43 idle watt on the NMP is unacceptable. A Mini 2.6 does 11282 on Geekbench, and the 4 core Pro 12877. So the Pro is almost 4 times less efficient with energy than the mini compared to raw processing power.
Guess those two video cards are messing up completely in idle, where on idle, usually screen sleep pops in and the video cards could be turned off completely.
Also the Mini still has a platter disc, where the new Mac Pro has SSD only.

Big bummer for the environmental aware people!
Easy to compare against the old MP, but play it fair, and compare against the more modern models of the Apple portfolio.

Also, the amount of reduction in materials is nowhere reflected in the price. OK, Apple picked parts that are hard to obtain at a competitive price for DIY computer assembly, but the price/performance is really bad, and Apple first of all will make huge profit on this machine.

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Before one considers the electricity consumed by the disks moved to an external enclosure, or after?

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Less so when the displaced storage is added back in. Few are going to be able to afford 1TB flash, or even be able to make due with that little storage. Almost everyone will plug in external TB/FW/USB disks.

Great remark! And I bet those cheap Chinese crap adapters that come with those external discs are not the 90% efficient ones.

 

[NoMoreSony]

The best way to keep enviroment clean is definitely keep your old good Mac Pro 2009 or whatever you have now. Every new car or computer you're buying is simple waste of priceless resources of our mother nature. Every manufacturer who is pushing you to buy new device either showing you performance advantages or more stylish design is simply killing our Earth on the way to bigger profits.

Just imagine how much electricity and resources they can save by just optimizing old software? But it doesnt bring more profit, so they will continue to waste resorces and continue telling us BS about how they protect the nature with their new products. The worst thing is some people who really believe in this ugly marketing crap.

 

[Jibbajabba]

A device with a smaller footprint needs less materials and packaging, that IS amazing ....

 

[Exhale]

Who. Cares. Won't make a bit of difference. Zero.

Idle power consumption is a main determination of how much noise a machine makes when its not busy.

The sharply reduced idle power drain that has been seen over the last several generations of GPUs and CPUs is the reason why high end gaming rigs can run completely fan-less (passive) when not under significant load - far more silently than any office machine whose passive cooling abilities are inadequate. The Mac Pro reaps the same benefits.

 

[iPadPublisher]

Producing Aluminum requires an insane amount of energy. So yes, less Aluminum is a good thing.

According to Wikipedia, US Aluminum production consumes 5% of US generated energy.

Jeez really? I would have never guessed.

I'm with the others here, though, less everything is great. Probably most impactful is the shipping part. Three times more units in an airplane container equals a whole lot less flights. Means more units per UPS truck, and down the line. Saved fuel is the best impact possible, in my opinion.

The whole thing is also very recyclable, which is great.

 

[blanka]

Aluminium may take a lot of energy but:
The material is available plenty, even more than iron.
You can built a lot with it, including facades/window frames as it is almost corrosion free, especially once anodised.
The material is near to perfect recyclable. Once it is aluminium, it will stay usable aluminium about forever.
The production is more and more based on green energy, and then especially energy at moments we can't do much else with it, like mid-summer solar energy, peak wind energy or even night-time nuclear and stuff like that. It is quite easy to store aluminium rough bars for a couple of months.
I wonder if you can reverse the process and use aluminium as a sort of battery to store green energy for the winter!

 

[H2SO4]

....until you add on all the spaghetti attachments and Thunderbolt drives and USB 3 hubs and the 3-4 oversized monitors -- and then suddenly your nice little cylinder (ohhh so cute!) is an octopus gone amuck. And the energy each of these plug-in devices will require (especially the multiple monitors) will wipe out any gains you think you may have achieved just by buying the cylinder. Because as we all know with Apple products, you JUST don't buy the cylinder.

I too am very surprised that more haven't seen this. I think only one post before yours mentioned it. We need to know what the benchmarks are that this measurement was drawn from before we can say it's great.

 

[Rogifan]

The best way to keep enviroment clean is definitely keep your old good Mac Pro 2009 or whatever you have now. Every new car or computer you're buying is simple waste of priceless resources of our mother nature. Every manufacturer who is pushing you to buy new device either showing you performance advantages or more stylish design is simply killing our Earth on the way to bigger profits.

Just imagine how much electricity and resources they can save by just optimizing old software? But it doesnt bring more profit, so they will continue to waste resorces and continue telling us BS about how they protect the nature with their new products. The worst thing is some people who really believe in this ugly marketing crap.

I always feel a bit bad for rabid environmentalists. I'd hate living life in a sense wishing I didn't exist. If I had to live the life you describe (nothing new ever) then what's the point of living?

 

[dangerly]

It would want to use less power given it's no longer driving as many fans or 4 HDDs. But you need to take into account you'll now be 'forced' to run external drives for most of your storage.

Exactly!
All considered, power consumption will be greater than the previous generation MacPro.

 

[TheSecristian]

Sorry, but the power consumption is actually pretty bad.
I mean, come on!
A 2011 Mini has an idle consumption of 11 watt, even for the quad i7. And that is a 2 year old 32nm machine.
43 idle watt on the NMP is unacceptable. A Mini 2.6 does 11282 on Geekbench, and the 4 core Pro 12877. So the Pro is almost 4 times less efficient with energy than the mini compared to raw processing power.
Guess those two video cards are messing up completely in idle, where on idle, usually screen sleep pops in and the video cards could be turned off completely.
Also the Mini still has a platter disc, where the new Mac Pro has SSD only.

Big bummer for the environmental aware people!
Easy to compare against the old MP, but play it fair, and compare against the more modern models of the Apple portfolio.

Also, the amount of reduction in materials is nowhere reflected in the price. OK, Apple picked parts that are hard to obtain at a competitive price for DIY computer assembly, but the price/performance is really bad, and Apple first of all will make huge profit on this machine.

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Great remark! And I bet those cheap Chinese crap adapters that come with those external discs are not the 90% efficient ones.

Sorry, but this comparison doesn’t fit.

I have replaced my Linux server box with a maxed out Mac Mini + TB drives two years ago and it does a great job as internal / external server for development and some customer web tools.
It saved me >300 $ last year on my electricity bill while working quietly on my desk.

But as great as it is it can’t edit, export 4K video in a economic worthwhile way. It’s not suitable for this kind of heavy lifting.

The transport efficiency of my car is 45 MPG for transporting 0.5 tons (persons + luggage).
A good modern heavy truck is about 10 MPG for 20 tons transport capacity.
It neither makes sense for me to replace my car with such a truck nor does it make sense for the transport company to replace their truck with 40 cars.

For 4K real time editing the nMP with FCPX is an extremely efficient combo which also covers nearby all other computing tasks in a great way.

 

[jayducharme]

the nMP with FCPX is an extremely efficient combo which also covers nearby all other computing tasks in a great way.

True. Plus, most peripherals (like an external drive) are power sippers. They'd use about the same consumption whether they were internal or external. And many external devices can be powered simply by the host computer anyway. I don't see where all the concern is coming from.

Also, the MP is made for professionals who probably are already using external devices with their current setup. So the MP will in fact conserve a bit more energy. I certainly don't think the general public will be rushing to buy it when for most people an iMac (or an iPad) is more than sufficient.

 

[vmachiel]

So it can operate with a 12 core CPU, two powerful GPU's and it only needs a 450 W PSU. That is damn impressive.

 

[dafire]

was that pie chart done with numbers ?
The pie slices sizes are wrong. The Aluminium and steel looks like only 50%... it has to be larger.

 

[Shivetya]

they should not be counting material savings since the new machine does not have the capacity to mount drives the old one can. As in, if you reduce features and expandability and force those items into new external enclosures the cost and environmental impact of those external items should be expressed.

 

[theluggage]

It would want to use less power given it's no longer driving as many fans or 4 HDDs. But you need to take into account you'll now be 'forced' to run external drives for most of your storage.

True, but the fair comparison is between a nMP and an old MP with just its original, single, system drive and a pair of comparable graphics cards. Adding extra HDDs to your old MP would still increase the power consumption - internal or not - and a lot of users are using external or networked storage for their old Mac Pros anyway.


Raises lots of interesting questions - like, is an external RAID box more or less power-hungry than an internal one? Does moving all your bulk storage to a server in a small, efficiently-cooled machine room save on air conditioning c.f. having to deal with the heat of dozens of disc drives in the office*? Can you save energy by using a tiered storage/fusion system with a 256GB SSD 'buffer' and a bunch of low-power, 5200 rpm discs in place of power-guzzling 10,000 rpm drives?

(*Ans - probably depends on whether you live in a hot or cold place).

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was that pie chart done with numbers ?

No, it was probably done with Keynote