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Heat_Fan89

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Feb 23, 2016
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I've got a weird problem after installing a Western Digital Blue SSD in my Mac mini (2012). The installation was a breeze. It took me about 15 minutes total. The worst part was lining up the two pegs in the holes towards the back where you can't see. I used two pieces of scotch tape and that did the trick.

I formatted the brand new SSD with APFS, then I preceded to install Mojave. After the installation and when I got to the desktop I noticed the Mini was hot. Why? That's the part I don't understand. I thought maybe the fan was not connected, but I remember setting it aside and not disconnecting the cable to the motherboard.

So I installed Macs Fan Control and ran the fan up to 5000rpm. I could hear the fan so it definitely was connected and it was blowing hot air out the back. The temps were 65c at the desktop on a brand new install.

So I checked Activity Monitor and there was the problem. Instead of the CPU idling at 1-2%. It was running at 25%. So I started looking for the offending task (brand new install) and Spotlight, Finder and a host of others were running much higher than when I had the stock 5400 RPM drive in place.

So after my background info. Is it possible that it's indexing the SSD and that's what is causing the CPU to spike or is TRIM doing some behind the scenes work? It does drop back down after awhile but pops back up.

But I must say what a drastic difference from a stock 5400 RPM to an internal SSD. To put it in perspective here are the boot times from a power on times when pressing the power on button to the desktop.

Mojave 5400RPM = 1 min and 12 secs (stopwatch)

Mojave SSD = 18.5 secs (stopwatch)
 
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If its still doing it, pull up spot light and start to type something in. It will show an indexing status bar.

829479040
 
If its still doing it, pull up spot light and start to type something in. It will show an indexing status bar.

829479040
It's calm down quite a bit since the install. Spotlight is down to 0-1% which is acceptable and the other tasks have normalized. So I'm getting between 1-4% CPU spikes at idle.
 
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Spotlight will start indexing. Maybe you did transfer a lot of your previous data to the new SSD. Then when indexing kicks in you got “the heat goes on” medley.
 
Spotlight will start indexing. Maybe you did transfer a lot of your previous data to the new SSD. Then when indexing kicks in you got “the heat goes on” medley.
That's what I thought as well and there were other tasks that were using a ton of CPU clocks but after some time had passed everything calmed down. Oh, and I did not transfer any data, this was just arriving at the desktop after I entered my log in password at the sign in screen from the last phase of the installation reboot process.
 
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