Looks like normal. I also get around 100ºC when stessing the CPU for long periods of time. (Plus fans at 5500rpm).
That's why I plan on modding a spare bottom cover I bought. Won't be able to do it for some days. I'll post results as soon as I have it all done.
FYI, I noticed a 7ºC temp drop when moving my old 2010 Mac Mini to another more ventilated location. And some extra 8ºC when removing the bottom cover and elevating the mini a little bit with the edges of two books. That's why I wanna mod this extra bottom cover.
That's why I plan on modding a spare bottom cover I bought. Won't be able to do it for some days. I'll post results as soon as I have it all done.
FYI, I noticed a 7ºC temp drop when moving my old 2010 Mac Mini to another more ventilated location. And some extra 8ºC when removing the bottom cover and elevating the mini a little bit with the edges of two books. That's why I wanna mod this extra bottom cover.
Hi Philipma and all others - thanks for covering this topic so thoroughly!
I am a new Mac Mini owner (I have a Macbook Air since about one year and needed some more serious computing power for rendering, transcoding etc.) and a bit worried of the temps I am reading with my new 2012 2.3 Quadcore Mac Mini, Fusion drive and stock Apple 8 GB Ram.
When running handbrake or prime95 (stress test with 8 "cores" at 100%) my CPU temps (1/2/A read with iStat) go up to 221 F/105 C and the fan spins at 5500 rpm.
I have tried to elevated my Mini and other tips I found here, but have seen no change in temperature whatsoever.
Since so far prime95 did not show me any error (around 4 hours into the stress test when I stop that in order not to kill anything at those temperatures).
So I am a bit concerned, especially when I see that with your new 2.3 quad Mini you will have your fan go up only to 3100 rpm (if I understood correctly) - leaving you with enough headroom - but mine is already maxed out at 5500 rpm. And as well it is no fun working besides a mini that runs so loud with the fan blasting away when under load (but when only browsing, running Office, software development etc. is is very quit and nice).
Have you done anything else in order to achieve these low rpm/temperature ratios?
Should I bring my Mini to the Apple store - even though technically it seems to work ok so far?
Should I go ahead and have prime95 run for a couple of days in order to make sure it is stable or would this be in the contrary contra-productive because it will accelerate the aging of the components?
Or should I further try find the cause for this, e. g. bad contact of the heatsink with the CPU and exchanging the thermal paste with Arctic Silver etc.?
Thanks,
Alex