[CUBE] Power Consumption

[Gnarlodious]

Entity Eng Yew Lee spoke thus:

> I should have some headroom
> as long as I dont overload my USB and Firewire ports.
It's all a matter of heat dissipation anyway. Good to keep in mind for when
we hit 6gHz processors and 36 inch LCD's.
 
> I love my cube!  Its a nerds delight!
More nerdy babbling about the PS:

One more oddity of the Cube's bizarre design. The external power supply
apparently needed a gizmo on the output side to give it a polled 2 watt
load. Under no-load conditions the pulse increases to infinitely wide and
the magnetics saturate and burn out the supply.
This is not an issue with other designs(including PC's) because the PS is
always connected to a minimum load. If you unplug the load and run the PS
you run the risk of burning it out.
The Cube's PS had to be designed to be potentially unloaded(unplugged) so
the upshot is that the discrepancy is not in the Cube itself but in the PS.

It looks like the 11-12 watt "no-load" load is what Apple decided is
necessary to keep the pulse from overmodulating with the variance a result
of periodic polling the Cube to decide if it is plugged in or not.

Hope that makes sense . . .

-- Rachel 
http://www.Gnarlodious.com/Entities/Computer/Cube/Cube.html