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2018 Mac Mini coil whine

robo456 said:
Just on a side note for the comments that this is not just a Mini issue, I can confirm. I have an Alienware Aurora R7, and any time I put in an M.2 drive, it makes something on the motherboard buzz like a mosquito. Same as the Mini, as CPU usage goes up (especially playing intensive games), it gets very loud. 🙁
Click to expand...

Yes I've also heard buzz on other machines like the i7 nuc. But on those it was only noticeable if the system fan was very low or off. My MM was audible nearly all the time, definitely a higher level. Very much reminded me of a platter drive loading!
 
While Apple does have experience building compact internal power-supplies across their various desktop and iMac lines, it's hard to call the execution flawless ( just search here for the keywords coilwhine, coil-whine, etc).

They should also have experience "jamming everything together" and not having noticeable problems with EMF/EMI and audio-distortions . However, it is not easy to combat. I wonder if 0.00% is even possible.

As for this "noise" on the MacMini-2018 , which is it exactly? If I really wanted to know, I think I would disconnect the internal-speaker , disconnect all normal external-speakers, and then see if the noise is still there.
 
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< I have an Alienware Aurora R7, and any time I put in an M.2 drive, it makes something on the motherboard buzz like a mosquito.

I have a "loaded" Aurora-R6 . I've never heard anything like that on mine. I also have it connected to a nice APC-UPS. We push it hard daily with long WoW and/or Fallout-4 sessions (on Ultra settings).

Alienware Aurora (R6)
Intel i7-7700K 4.2ghz (Kaby Lake)
16gb (2x8gb) DDR4 Kingston Hyper-X Fury 2667mhz Ram (Dual-Channel)
Asetek-OEM Liquid Cooling for CPU
850w Power Supply
Nvidia GTX-1070 OEM (8gb) PCIe back-blower (MSI-OEM)
Samsung PM-961 512gb SSD (M.2 PCIe NVMe) TLC/EVO-OEM
 
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FWIW, every Surfacebook I have ever had for work also had coil whine. I have just never had such bad coil whine on a machine compared to these Mac Minis. Even my beast of a gaming PC whines less.
 
m.
I'm in a relatively soundproofed studio, exceptionally acoustically treated.

My Mini is around 70cm from my head, a little behind my monitor.

I mean. It's fine. 😀
 
Having my 2nd Mac Mini 2018 (produced 2020). The first one was really bad (like an old harddrive). The second one is slightly better, but it also has a noticeable coil whine. Not only hearing that stuff when ssd reading/writing - it is also noticeable, when running idle. The sound reminds me of coil whine from graphics cards (the one that you can get, when moving the mouse).

I have the Mac Mini positioned around 70cm away from my head. Unfortunately my Office is really really quiet. The reason, why I kept (so far) the second one, is that the frequency is a little bit more pleasant. I notice it, but it is not as annoying.

It is really unfortunate, that Apple didn't adress this concern with their 2018 model. Maybe I was lucky before, but none of my other Apple products is suffering coil whine. Having a silent, premium looking computer with a wonderful Unix commandline (and Kernel) - that's what I love about Apples machines.

Unfortunately the experiance is suffering lately 🙁
Maybe I shouldn't have bought the i7 version?
 
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samstre said:
Unfortunately the experiance is suffering lately 🙁
Maybe I shouldn't have bought the i7 version?
Click to expand...

The Minis burn out too. I've seen people who write for a living mention their Mini burned out.

We need a real desktop that doesn't start at $6,000-.
 
DVD9 said:
We need a real desktop that doesn't start at $6,000-.
Click to expand...

Absolutely! $6,000.- is definetly bs.

But to be honest: Personally, I would have even jumped in the $6,000.- game. But not for what Apple is offering. And I am not only talking about selling an underpowered 8core 8gb machine for a lot of money. It's more than that. (For me) The real issue is that they were (again?) unlucky!

Having Intel as a partner is (at this point) really unfortunate. Lacking the power + having security flaws + $6,000.-? Really? And to make matters worse, you can't even stick a Nvidia card into it? Your only choice is a (again heavily overpriced + outdated) AMD card? At least you can stick your stock x5700 xt in it - and sacrifice the (indeed brilliant) cooling solution - which is (at least for me) the reason, why I would spend so much money on a computer.
Oh... Having no dustfilter is also not ideal.

But enough of the shame. It's a really really nice machine.
Even the Mac Mini is ok. It's a nice machine. Outdated... making weird noised... Overpriced for housing 2 year old hardware, but hey... It is great for coding + having 64GB of ram that thing can run a lot of vm's for testing etc. The 10G atheros card is also quite nice.

The only thing I don't get, is why nobody at Apple is experiancing this issues as well. Cause I'm 100% sure they all use their own products. So please Apple: Continue making great products. Please go the extra mile and design you products, so they last longer (to protect the environment) and make your products upgradable (no need to solder harddrives, cpus or ram to your boards - there is even no need to glue in a battery). And if they than happen to not make any weird noises: Perfect! You've nailed it!

I would be very happy to spend my money. 😉
 
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samstre said:
Having my 2nd Mac Mini 2018 (produced 2020). The first one was really bad (like an old harddrive). The second one is slightly better, but it also has a noticeable coil whine. Not only hearing that stuff when ssd reading/writing - it is also noticeable, when running idle. The sound reminds me of coil whine from graphics cards (the one that you can get, when moving the mouse).

I have the Mac Mini positioned around 70cm away from my head. Unfortunately my Office is really really quiet. The reason, why I kept (so far) the second one, is that the frequency is a little bit more pleasant. I notice it, but it is not as annoying.

It is really unfortunate, that Apple didn't adress this concern with their 2018 model. Maybe I was lucky before, but none of my other Apple products is suffering coil whine. Having a silent, premium looking computer with a wonderful Unix commandline (and Kernel) - that's what I love about Apples machines.

Unfortunately the experiance is suffering lately 🙁
Maybe I shouldn't have bought the i7 version?
Click to expand...
I didn't notice the noise my 2018 mini makes until I brought it home due to covid. It turns out that my office AC is noisy enough to completely mask the sound the mini SSD makes. Not true at home (no AC). And yes, it does click and chirrup like a HDD.
 
Spectrum said:
I didn't notice the noise my 2018 mini makes until I brought it home due to covid. It turns out that my office AC is noisy enough to completely mask the sound the mini SSD makes. Not true at home (no AC). And yes, it does click and chirrup like a HDD.
Click to expand...
I must have been a lucky one, because my MM 2018 (that I bought in December 2018) is silent as a dead rat, unless I'm doing some intensive writing on the internal SSD, which in my case is almost never, since I have an external SSD used for my work, the inner one is for the OS and apps.

I work at home in an extremely silent room, and I'm also very picky with noises, so I consider myself very lucky.
 
madrag said:
I must have been a lucky one, because my MM 2018 (that I bought in December 2018) is silent as a dead rat, unless I'm doing some intensive writing on the internal SSD, which in my case is almost never, since I have an external SSD used for my work, the inner one is for the OS and apps.

I work at home in an extremely silent room, and I'm also very picky with noises, so I consider myself very lucky.
Click to expand...

Mine is silent too (at least in terms of coil whine). I think for a while there was some speculation it was certains specs and/or certain capacities, so for reference, mine is an i7 with 512GB storage (I've got a TB3 1TB external too).

I've got it sitting on a big BB fan, bottom cover removed, when the fan is set to medium speed, it's very quiet, high you get a little fan whirling in the background. The worst offender is my beer fridge, when that thing kicks on, I just turn up the music 😀
 
Just received a new Mac Mini.

Existing i5 Mac Mini: No coil whine

New i7 Mac Mini: Whines like crazy, very very noticeable and annoying even 6ft away
 
Have had a my i7/64gb/2tb Mini since June and never noticed any "coil whine". My work involves frequent copying of large amounts of data. I make maps, which consist of small 256x256 pixel "tiles". A couple of these each contain around 800,000 of these small .png files and tens of thousands of subdirectories.

Never any whine, but it sure does get hot when doing big file copies. 🙂
 
mike... said:
Just received a new Mac Mini.

Existing i5 Mac Mini: No coil whine

New i7 Mac Mini: Whines like crazy, very very noticeable and annoying even 6ft away
Click to expand...
Eventually there _are_ advantages of getting older - you don’t care for coil whine, because you simply can’t hear it anymore 😁😎
 
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So we've now had three of these i7 Mac Minis, each with coil whine with the stock 8GB RAM, and completely gone after upgrading to a Corsair 32GB kit.
 
8 months in with my 2018 i7/64gb/2tb Mini and still haven't heard the elusive "coil whine". Just wondering... could this be the high-frequency equivalent of "the hum" that some people hear and others don't? Seriously, if you stood next to my Mini, maybe you would hear it? 🙂
 
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