2018 Mac Mini Fan stuck on full.

[Sean869]

I hoping that somebody can help me. I have a 2018 mac mini i7 and about 2 weeks ago the fan kept intermittently switching to full speed for a few seconds then back to normal, it has got progressively worse and now it seems to be on full speed all the time. It does it from start up and the air blowing out the back of the machine is cold so i know its not working too hard and overheating. It now even stays on full blast when i shut the machine down, the only way i can stop it is to unplug the it from the socket, and when i plug it back in it starts again before i even boot it up. I have checked the apple website and found an article about the T2 security chip causing the mac to enter a mode where the fans run full speed and followed the procedure to fix it by resetting the SMC (whatever that is) but nothing works, its driving me crazy.

I put my mac into diagnostic mode by booting it holding down option+D and I get an error code PPF003 ironically that cures the problem for a few hours then it starts up again.

Can any of you help me out ?

 

[D.T.]

Sounds like a bad sensor or fan or some kind of deep rooted firmware issue. Especially with the PPF003 code, sounds like you need to take it in (bummer, but I don't think there's a fix you can do on your end).

 

[tony_mac]

You could try Mac Fan Control to see if you can spin it down.
https://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control/download
https://sourceforge.net/projects/macfan/

May be a bad fan sensor..
Thinking a while back, I had a Mac Pro with the fan stuck and did a SMC reset to get it to normalize.
SMC Reset

 

[Sean869]

Thanks very much for your replies, I will try the fan control for now so I can keep using it and then see if apple can fix it. Unfortunately the nearest Apple Shop is 50 miles away.

 

[Sean869]

I ended up taking my Mac to an approved apple repair centre, Stormfront in Salisbury (the one in England) and they have fitted a new fan which seems to have fixed the problem. I didn't know the fan worked like that, I thought something on the logic board like a temperature sensor or something told the fan when to spin up but it seems the fan decides what speed to spin at. They did however say that they have never replaced one before.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

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