[CUBE] cube power supply and upgrades

[Tom Davidson]

It's rated as a 225W supply. 

ADC monitors use between 100W (crt) and 55W (15" LCD)
That leaves about 125W, worst case for the core and all things
powered off USB and Firewire. Choose carefully :)

The dual 1G 7455 uses about 90W , the max a video card can use is 25W,
that doesnt leave much for the hard drive and motherboard.

You can use up to 12W per firewire port, and I think the Cube USB
Powered speakers use 20W. 

What Powerlogix is counting on is the new generation of Moto CPU's 
are supposed to use much less power, maybe even 1/2 as much.

The question is, how much margin did Apple design into the Brick??
I'd rather not find out the hard way.. maybe it's good for 10A (280W)
if it's got better cooling, it was probably designed for no cooling, 
laying on a carpeted floor with no airflow. If you put it on a stand
and lifted it off the table/floor, air could flow through it, of course
a small, quiet fan wouldn't hurt either. Just sticking some clear rubber
feet to bottom to lift it up off a table 1/2" will help a lot. They seem
pretty rugged, never read of one failing here.



Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 19:41:33 +0100
Subject: [CUBE] cube power supply and upgrades
From: Richard Clark <mawgadog at tin.it>
Message-Id: <A50A2976-226F-11D7-9139-003065C18A26 at tin.it>

Everyone is always talking (and doing for that matter) upgrades on the 
cube bigger hard drives faster video cards and cpu upgrades. To cool as 
this stuff down fans are added one in the base of the cube and one 
usually on the video card. What about the cubes power supply if all 
these things are more powerful they drink more juice and that must heat 
up the brick also which would shorten it's life, is the power brick 
forgotten or is it already over engineered to take this extra 
punishment, should we think about cooling that also? Anybody have any 
ideas on this subject?