Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

2011 Mac Mini i7 idles hot Windows 7

S

shortcut3d

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 24, 2011
1,112
15
I have three 2011 Mac Minis. The two i7 dual core are idling very warm compared to the i7 quad core Mac Mini Server which is cold to the touch when idling. The 2011 Mac Mini Server still has 1866MHz 8GB RAM. The i7 dual core machines are now running Samsung low voltage 1333MHz in an effort to cool them down. All systems have had the MBR patched to enable AHCI successfully and are running Windows 7 x64 SP1. They all have Vertex3-MI SSDs and WD Scorpio Black drives. I've updated the video drivers from the manufacturer, ATI for the i7 dual core and Intel for the i7 quad core. Power Settings are set to Best Peformance with Sleep disabled on all machines and minimum CPU utilization lowered to 5%.

Any suggestions?
 
MJL said:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/lubbofancontrol/ latest version gives an error message and won't start (something is missing) but previous version will run.
Click to expand...

I'm looking for a setting / registry / driver that is the cause of the warm idle. The warm idle to me signifies that the system is consuming more power than normal. I feel the Mac Mini is within spec. Increasing the fan speed is not really an option as this is a HTPC.
 
shortcut3d said:
I'm looking for a setting / registry / driver that is the cause of the warm idle. The warm idle to me signifies that the system is consuming more power than normal. I feel the Mac Mini is within spec. Increasing the fan speed is not really an option as this is a HTPC.
Click to expand...

It is just that the CPU's have a far higher TDP than the previous CPU's (35 Watt for duo core and 45 Watt for Quad core) versus 18 Watt for the 2010 ones.

MacFan0_65 will allow you to set a minimum fan speed - the 2011 2.5 needs about 2200 rpm to get down to the same temperature at idle as the 2.4 2010 model. At the moment I am starting this fan setting manually but I suppose that someone more clever than me can automate this at startup. (I love to know how)
 
The i7 dual core had a discrete GPU which is always on in Win7 and runs warmer than the integrated GPU which does not get switched on. The i7 QC only has integrated and runs cooler. It has nothing to do with the CPU's in this instance at idle.

There may be a setting to change the GPUs, but I honestly have not looked for it.
 
I noticed that Power Play is not available in CCC. This maybe a source of the problem.

Any ideas to enable it?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back