Mac Mini 1.5GHz Fan Noise

[tom vilsack]

Scored a great deal on a 1.5GHz ppc mac mini today..($70)..it has 1 gig ram,64mb ati 9300,80 gig hd,wifi,bt ect...even came with box and original tiger cd,s and printed material...

I wiped the drive and installed Leopard (update update update)...compared to my intel 1.66GHz mini i notice this ones fan liked to go up and down a fair amount (flash really kicks it up loud).

I have done everything i can think of (maybe just a fact of life and live with it?)
-reset pram
-command option O,F (reset-nvram,set-defaults,reset-all)
-PMU hard reset (removed all cables,wait 10 secs,hold down power button,reconnect power cord,release power button,reconnect all cables,power on....reset time/date)

now the above did seem to help,but not totally cure issue of moderate up and down fan noise...(istatnano reports hd 43c)

btw: box shows model as 1.42GHz,32mb ati...but did some reading and best i can find is apple never printed box with 1.5GHz and 64mb stats)

 

[Bug-Creator]

Does the fan stay quite while the Mini is idle ?

If so everythink is probraly o.k., that fan can get quite loud when the CPU is under load.

You might want to open the Mini and clear out all dust as that would make the fan's job much harder.

 

[estrides]

I second that. Cleaning the dust out will definitely help that little fan from struggling.

 

[jbarley]

You can try this, it might help and cannot hurt.

Go to...
System Preferences->Energy Saver->Options

Make sure that "Processor Performance" is not set on Automatic, either of the other two settings usually give more stable fan control.

 

[tom vilsack]

Does the fan stay quite while the Mini is idle ?

If so everythink is probraly o.k., that fan can get quite loud when the CPU is under load.

You might want to open the Mini and clear out all dust as that would make the fan's job much harder.

Yes at idle fan is just lightly on...first thing i did was give it a good cleaning,took it apart ect...

You can try this, it might help and cannot hurt.

Go to...
System Preferences->Energy Saver->Options

Make sure that "Processor Performance" is not set on Automatic, either of the other two settings usually give more stable fan control.

this option is not part of osx leopard

..............

guess I'm just not used to the ppc fan noise compared to my intel mini...I'm guessing it's normal...thxs for suggestions...

 

[FourCandles]

I have the same machine as the OP - running it as a headless media server / MAMP box / file server / print server. Great little machine and I reckon you had a good deal.

The fan is usually ticking over, even when serving music around the house, but ramps up considerably when down- or uploading lots of data. I;ve also noticed the odd quirk that causes the fans to ramp up - for example if someone sends a print job to a connected printer and it hangs because the printer is out of paper (!!) then the fans go up until the problem is sorted. Or if there's a software update dialog waiting to be answered in the System Preferences panel.

Yes, the 1.5GHz / 64MB VRAM was a "silent upgrade", never offically announced by Apple.

...
Go to...
System Preferences->Energy Saver->Options

Make sure that "Processor Performance" is not set on Automatic, either of the other two settings usually give more stable fan control.

...
this option is not part of osx leopard

FWIW the option *is* built in to Leopard, but just not for that machine. I have it on an iMac G5, an iBook G4 and a PowerBook G4, but not on my Mini G4. No idea what the rationale was for including / not including certain models.

 

[jbarley]

FWIW the option *is* built in to Leopard, but just not for that machine.

Thank you for clearing that up.

 

[tom vilsack]

FourCandles: thxs for info about leopard...when i got machine home and click about this mac i was wtf? as even seller had it as 1.42 and what it says on box (original price even $749.99 sticker) think i did well ;-)...today i made another partition and put original Tiger restore dvd's on second partition and i notice it's a lot quieter,also noticeably faster.

 

[FourCandles]

^^ No problem. I would also run Tiger if it wasn't for some of the software needing Leopard.

And, you've prompted me to open up the Mini to blow the dust off again, so that's good

 

[tom vilsack]

minor update:

when i said i had taken mini apart before,i had only removed cover...today i completely took everything apart (fan,harddrive,airport/bluetooth ect)....cleaning cpu heatsink and fan really helped,as now machine is running almost silent (except when using flash).

using ifixit...one minor difference (and I'm guessing only with 1.5GHz) but wires for airport and bluetooth are togeather within the add on card ,so no need to take off as shown in this pic (makes it a tad easier)