The M1 Mac mini’s power consumption and thermal output figures highlight how much more efficient the Apple Silicon is than the Intel chips that powered older models …
Daring fireball compiled the numbers from an Apple support document.
A few weeks ago, Apple added the new model M1 to its support page listing the power consumption and thermal output of all Mac Mini models (including the 2005 original, which used a PowerPC G4 CPU). The numbers from 2014 onwards are quite impressive.
Funny fact:
It is important to note that the M1 Mac Mini’s maximum energy consumption and thermal output are only slightly higher than the idle power / thermal numbers for the original PowerPC G4 Mac Mini 2005. A new M1 Mac Mini running at full speed uses almost the same energy as a G4 Mac Mini just sitting there with the Finder open and doing nothing.
| MAC MINI MODEL | Idle power (W) |
Max power (W) |
Idle thermal output (BTU / H) | Maximum thermal output (BTU / H) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020, M1 | 7 | 39 | 23 | 133 |
| 2018, Core i7 6-core | 20 | 122 | 68 | 417 |
| 2014, 2-core Core i5 | 6 | 85 | 20 | 290 |
| … | ||||
| 2006, Core Solo / Duo | 23 | 110 | 79 | 376 |
| 2005, PowerPC G4 | 32 | 85 | 110 | 290 |
John Gruber speculates that the difference between the 2014 and 2018 models may explain why there was such a long gap between updates: that Apple hoped to switch to its own chip because Intel was not delivering, but was eventually forced to launch a temporary update.
This gap in the Mac desktop hardware […] was seen by many as a sign that Apple had lost interest in the Mac. Even after the [Mac Pro heads-up] At the roundtable meeting, however, Schiller’s comment “the Mac Mini remains a product of our line” was considered a sign that, even though Apple had a reinvigorated interest in high-end Mac desktops, the Mac Mini did not it was a priority.
But then came the highly regarded Mac Mini 2018. It was still an important product in Apple’s lineup! But well seen or not, look at the thermals in the table above. The 2018 Mac Mini has three times the power consumption and thermal output of the new M1 Mac Mini – and far greater numbers than the 2014 Mac Mini models it replaced. It is an outlier in the trend line. And keep in mind that the M1 Mac Mini is also a much more performing computer.
Apple doesn’t like to talk about things like that, so we are left with conjectures, but it’s not hard to look at this simple table of power consumption and thermal output and consider that those “years apart” on Mac desktop hardware – the Mac Mini in particular – were largely the result of Intel chips running very hot by Apple standards. And that in 2017, Apple bit the bullet and did the best it could with what Intel had to offer, realizing then that it needed another generation of Intel Macs (desktop and laptop) before Apple’s Silicon Macs were ready.
The M1 Mac mini achieves its impressive energy efficiency, despite a significant increase in performance.
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