how to keep a mac mini from overheating?

[grcar]

Believe it or not my late 2014 Mac Mini paste was the worst. I was astounded that the paste was clumpy and mostly dried out before it was even a year old.

I also like the written guides from ifixit.

But as a matter of fact, any 2014 mac is under warranty, which by taking the machine apart you have probably voided. Still seems to me Apple should be doing the repair for free for those who do not want to do it themselves.

I wonder if Apple has "hidden" warranties.

 

[grcar]

late 2014 Mac Mini paste was the worst. I was astounded that the paste was clumpy and mostly dried out before it was even a year old.

I don't suppose you took a photo of the thermal paste on the 2014 mini?

 

[Andy2k]

Oops I meant to put that in the post. I had every intention of snapping a photo when I repasted the Mini. Then of course I forgot to snap a couple after I got it apart. Sorry I really wish I had too. Kick myself in the butt for that one.

 

[grcar]

found that there was a partial gap between the heatsink and CPU (I could see light between them). The heatsink on the graphics chip wasn't touching the chip at all. I could press down on the heatsink near the middle and make it contact both chips. Apparently the spring loaded screws were just not strong enough to press the heatsink down on to the CPU and graphics chip. In addition, the screws have a shoulder that will not permit you to tighten them down more.

It turns out that rwprater's observation about the heat sink not touching the GPU has been noticed by others. See the thread "Mac Mini 2012 i7 - worth redoing the heatsink compound?" and in particular the first comment by eyepea.

 

[frank4]

Are you sure the fan should begin rising above 85C?

I guess the sensor that controls the fan is getting warm later than the CPU (for this test I was running GeekBench three times to get 94°C, maybe not enough to increase the fan rpm).

Frank also wrote his Mac Mini is getting almost 100°C for a few minutes:
@ frank4: How many rpm do you set under load?

I currently set my 2011 base Mini to have the fan controlled by the "Macs Fan Control" app (as previously noted).
I have it set to use "sensor based" control, ahich will start to raise fan speed above minimum (1800 rpm) at CPU Core 0 temperature 50C, to maximum (5500 rpm) at 100C.

Without MacsFanControl after a few hours light work the CPU temp is 60C , fan is 1800 rpm and the case is very warm (but not quite "hot").
With MacsFanControl and the above settings after a few hours light work CPU temp is 55C, fan is 2200 rpm, and case is slightly warm. I think the slightly higher base fan speed prevents heat buildup from a light workload in a slightly warm room.

Yesterday I did a 30 minute HandBrake run and the fan got up to about 4600 rpm and CPU temperature 88C.

After again reading this thread I think I will give my Mini a checkup since it is almost 4 years old and clean the fan (last done 2 years ago) and try to check the CPU thermal paste.

 

[Waelman]

Hi all !
Thanx to you since I experiment time to time ( say 2 time in a month ) self reboot on my MM late 2012 i7, 16g ram, 512 SSD.
Drove me crazy. I have suspected bad ram, or bad app, or power supplie issue.
Two years running boxed Mountain Lion, and almost one year Yosemite 10.10.1 and 10.10.5.
Reboot came with Yosemite.
Does it mean that Yos is hungrier on CPU, or that It prevent earlier overheating ?
I run TG Pro, nice app, but had never programmed it in auto boost (meaning adapting fan speed to a certain temp ).
I just did this setting today and I hope that it will prevent that damn suddenly shut down.
What I suspect is mainly Safari and videos on it, and strangely FaceBook ( yes ) and is numerous animated gif or video.
I have monitored hi temp during this in the clever TG Pro menu bar .
One more thing : I run two screens ( DP 1920*1200 and Hdmi 1920*1080)
Maybe the graphic card is strongly solicited .

 

[ourkim]

If you have this kind of use in mind, just get a Mac Pro rather than throw money and time at pushing a Mac Mini beyond what it was designed for.

[doublepost=1465853206][/doublepost]I don't know if I am doing the right thing but I have a thick piece of cloth the same size as the mac mini .I run it under a cold tap until ice cold water , then sqeeze out and lay it flat on the top ,while I do any video editing .remove it after, .I have a mac dvd player on top ..normaly

 

[kkitt]

I want some suggestions for keeping a mac mini from overheating. All macs have a basic design problem in that the external case is too small to allow proper cooling of the cpu and graphics chips. In the old days Apple put huge heat sinks on the chips which allowed them to keep cool under continual heavy use. Because the chips in the new machines are inadequately cooled, they "throttle back" when they get hot, which is a way of saying your quad-core i7 chip is not capable of running at full speed and heavy load continuously. What kind of external fans and other third-party cooling options allow a mac mini to run at 100% (400%) for a long time?

[doublepost=1564435117][/doublepost]Try smcFanControl its free reduce my macmini 75-100 degrees

 

[Hessel89]

even though the Mac Mini 2018 may reach high temperatures, the 8th generation Intel core i series are perfectly capable of handling this.
I'm from the Netherlands and we had another heatwave last week with temperatures reaching 42 ºC. (I don't have an airco at home) and while my 2017 MBP struggled to keep up at 80 ºC CPU temps my Mac mini wasn't breaking a sweat at 99ºC with literally no performance decrease. if you want to keep it cooler to be on the safe side you can run an app called Macs Fan Control. I usually set mine at 3000 RPM. It's at the point where don't really notice any fan noise but it does keep temperatures about 10 degrees lower.

 

[magicMac]

why not take the mac mini apart and make your own case, perhaps with watercooling ? should get more sustained high performance from the i7...

To simplify the process you could disconnect the WiFi/BT antenna and disable Wi-Fi and BT in system settings, then you just have logic board, fan and PSU.

 

[Shawn2571]

I have found the only way to keep any mac mini or macbook pro temperatures from causing damage is by using SMC fan control and not being afraid to run them fans at 3500 to 4500 rpm all the time. Sure you fan might wear out quicker, but replacing a fan is much cheaper than replacing a fried logic board