Add a battery to Mini

[trip1ex]

It doesn’t make much sense with the iMac because it is a display, and big displays still need more wattage than thunderbolt can provide, and are not supposed to be portable, so could easily fit an internal PSU. But in spite of that, 70% of this Reddit poll said they were fine with Apple removing the PSU and using a power brick. Even though it still has no battery.

Nah. Not only do quite a few lcd monitors have external power supplies but something as thin as the iMac probably required one.

And the advantage of that with a monitor is a thinner form factor and less heat/noise close to user’s ears. And probably a repair advantage as well.


And obviously since iMac has an external PS, Mac Mini could easily.

But there are some considerations or obstacles. Specifically ports. To make the Mini much smaller or thinner wouldn’t play well with cables plugged into the back of it. The Mini wouldn’t sit flat. Too thin and you can’t even have ports.

I doubt they would take out PS and not shrink the device.

 

[varezhka]

And OP keeps talking about the accidental unplugging of Mac mini. Well, one way to reduce such likelihood is to have the power supply fully integrated inside the PC instead of having multiple points of connection.

Remember the original G4 Mac mini with external PSU featuring a vaguely USB Type-C-ish connector? And how much easier they (or the current USB Type-C ports) unplugged and/or frayed compared to the standard figure 8 plugs on the current Mac mini?

Would it be possible to shrink the Mac mini chassis by moving PSU outside? Sure, there are hobbyists who already do that and post YouTube videos. Are there any practical advantages? Not really. All you are doing is adding complexity and reducing flexibility for a device that primarily sits on your desk.

 

[dumastudetto]

Just use an iPad Pro instead.

 

[HowardEv]

let's not get into a discussion about whether the Mini can get away with 65W.

What is going on in the Mini that makes it draw more power than a MBP, that easily charges from the StudioDisplay, and also has a screen? Is there a space heater in there or something?

 

[theluggage]

What is going on in the Mini that makes it draw more power than a MBP, that easily charges from the StudioDisplay, and also has a screen? Is there a space heater in there or something?

An interesting question - the typical power draw is 7W-50W but the "Electrical and Operating Requirements" say 150W (or 185W for the M2 Pro version so it's not arbitrary - that could be because each extra TB port needs to be able to supply 15W). Thing is, I trust Apple... not to use a 150W PSU if they could save themselves a few bucks by using a 60W one!

I'd guess that there is some perfect storm of conditions (maxing out all the CPU and GPU cores while having bus-powered devices plugged into all the free ports...) which would draw more than 70W where the MacBook would either have to throttle or start draining the battery. Maybe not something that happens in normal use but in the event of a software foulup. For example, I never hear the fan on my Mac Studio ramp up while running stuff like Logic, the Cinebench benchmark (which used to make my Intel iMac howl) or playing Minecraft at 4k+ res (purely for testing and evaluation purposes of course) - but minimise Minecraft and there seems to be some kind of bug in the current version that causes various glitches and pegs all the GPU cores, at which point you can hear the fan start up, showing that something is burning a lot of energy....

It's worth noting that power consumption tends to rise with the square of clock speed which is why even a modest amount of throttling can save a lot of power.