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2018 Mac Mini coil whine
- Thread starter brentsg
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I've got a year on Steve Jobs.Exactly how old are you?
-Probably same as Cape Dave.
My brand new i5/512/8gb has coil whine, or hissing. It is sporadic when copying files, always occurs on boot up, and is audible from about 4 feet away at times. Most of the time it is barely audible unless you put your ear close to the Mini. Although with my tinnitus, its hard to tell.
I am debating if I should return for an exchange or keep the "half good" one. I bought through Adorama and they are surprisingly offering to exchange it if I send it back ASAP. Tough call!
I am debating if I should return for an exchange or keep the "half good" one. I bought through Adorama and they are surprisingly offering to exchange it if I send it back ASAP. Tough call!
In my previous post, I also had a coil whine that I can hear from 4 feet away.
So, I returned i7/1TB/16GB and bought i3/512GB/16GB. I am surprised that this one does not have the coil whine. So you do have a chance of getting one that does not have coil whine.
Maybe try i3?
It runs much cooler and fan never ramps up. It stays quiet all times compared to i7. Also, it does not heat up the room as much as i7. Personally, I think i7 runs too hot. i7 also was noisy with the fan when the CPU did photos library build-up or watching 4k videos.
I want to add, the Logitech MX series and G400s caused coil whine for both Mac Mini's and I found the solution. I installed G Logitech Mouse software and it actually resolved the coil whine when the mouse was moving.
On the side note, I downsized the SSD by purchasing 2x 1TB Patriot EVLVR NVMe thunderbolt 3 external SSD. They write and read 1000MB/s and plenty speedy enough for video rendering.
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So, I returned i7/1TB/16GB and bought i3/512GB/16GB. I am surprised that this one does not have the coil whine.
Do you have any hissing when you put your ear up to the Mini? It is cool to hear you got a good one! I am just scared with how many people on the thread and other forums have said they got a worse one after returning the first. FWIW, my model was sent from China around February of 2019, so it is not a first line run model.
My first one (i7) was made in mid-Jan. Second one (i3) was made in mid-February. Yes, I started to hear hissing from the i7 from the second day. Then a week later I started to have coil whine from the mouse moving. The video that was attached on this thread is from the i7. Things were getting worse, so I thought I should return it as something might fail down the road. My guess is that it might be something to do with the power supply or capacitor.
I'm moving a terabyte of data to an external drive right now and the Mac mini is 145 degrees with coil whine/clicking if I put my ear right on the said 145 degree box (it is very warm but not OMG hot). Coil whine is overshadowed by the hard drives clicking all over the place.
I thought the general consensus is hard drive clicking (hissing) is coil whine? My temps are about the same when i move data. it seems like APple avoids running the fan as much as possible, mine hovers around 1,300rpm
Sorry I meant hard DISK drives vs coil whine with the internal SSD. My HDD are 10TB each :/
512GB? I'm on my second replacement and the hiss got worse on this one. Both 512.
From Marty’s signature line he has 256gb. My husband has the 512 but he can’t hear high pitched noises. I’ll try to listen to his work computer in the future because now you have me curious. Mine is a 1tb and no noise unless I stick my ear on it while it’s transferring files.
Right.
For such a powerful (yet so small) machine, it is strange that the whole power-supply is (still) completely internal.
Why strange? My 2011 mini also had the power supply internally.
Normally, objectives for PC Power Supplies are to be powerful, dependable, and resilient.
The Mac-Mini design puts an unnecessary size-restriction on everything. It is also thermally challenged (especially the upper-configs of the 2018 model at max utilization).
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I have the same plan for the Mac Mini I am planning to purchase. At present I have a MacBook Pro 2017 without Touch Bar and run it off a Samsung X5 500GB as boot drive. Speeds are amazing, BlackMagic giving Write 1,667 and Read 2,405 - Faster even than the already fast internal SSD.
My only worry is if running the boot externally will bring up any issues with the T2 chip. Do you boot from the external Patriot EVLVR NVMe? Fast as they are, they seem to be slower than the amazing Samsung X5
I have the i7 with 512 GB SSD and absolutely no coil whine or hissing even from a few inches away. The fan does spin up during boot and sometimes when I'm playing a game but this sound is different from coil whine. If your mini is making any weird noise return it now for a replacement before it breaks out of warranty then you have to pay to get it fixed.
Understand. I only have the I5 and don't push it hard at all. My 2011 started to have high temps but unsure why. It's one of the reasons I went with a new 2018 mini.
Do you use audio apps ?
Mine is like yours, i7 500ssd and completely silent, even on cinebench tests.
Great performance almost 6000 single core benchmark score and near 27000 multicore.
But it’s producing high pitch sound when I launch audio softwares like ableton/reaper/protools/logic....
No audio apps. I wonder how only audio apps would cause this strain but not other programs. Are you sure the sound isn't coming from the built in speaker because of some glitch?
