> Thanks to the power efficiency of Apple Silicon, the M1 Mac mini was the perfect hardware to test out PoE, as on idle, the device only consumes 6W. When some load is applied to the internals, that power draw can go up to 40W. After some thorough research, we found out that the maximum throughput of Power over Ethernet was 15.4W and that too over varying voltages, which are details that Ivan had left out when showing off his findings on Twitter.

The last sentence has enough typos that I'm not able to follow what they're trying to say. What happens when the machine requires more than 15.4W? If the thing isn't actually usable or stable in real-world scenarios, this becomes a lot less exciting.

It'd also be more interesting if the full components list of what was added to the inside of the machine to make this possible was shared.

Edit: Thanks to @ravetcofx for revealing how more power can be delivered over PoE https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962808