Mac Mini 2014 appears dead after a hard drive swap. Thoughts?

[KayvK]

I followed step by step an iFixit guide on replacing the Mac's old ass drive. Everything seemed good, except when I turned it on, it wouldn't POST.

I heard the fan spinning (and with further testing the old drive spinning), but after 5 seconds it would power off. It would then power on again and repeat the cycle. No boot chime at all.

I have tried SMC resets, Power Supply swaps, and double checking the cables. Nothing is working.

Any starters? I am completely out of ideas.

 

[KayvK]

Forgot to mention that I have tried plugging it in to a different outlet too. Didnt work

 

[KayvK]

UPDATE: I replaced the PRAM battery and now it's beeping every 1 second, indicating a RAM issue. This sucks, since the RAM is soldered in. But it wasnt like this before replacing the hard drive, so is there anything Ive ****ed up?

 

[Kaida]

yea you could have yanked on the memory chip when you are pulling out the motherboard. Find those component level repair people in your neighborhood to see if they can remount the ram chips

 

[EugW]

Make sure all the connections are solid.

Too late now, but I'm curious. Why did you swap out the drive? Was it defective? If it wasn't defective, the much easier storage upgrade is to install an NVMe SSD. You can keep a working HD in for extra storage or Time Machine.

 

[KayvK]

Make sure all the connections are solid.

Too late now, but I'm curious. Why did you swap out the drive? Was it defective? If it wasn't defective, the much easier storage upgrade is to install an NVMe SSD. You can keep a working HD in for extra storage or Time Machine.

Double checked, everything looks solid. I did **** up on the IR cable, but I've fixed that, and to my knowledge it should boot up without an IR cable (though I'm not certain.)
I'm suspecting now an underlying issue with the hardware that only failed just now (because I got unlucky or something).


As for why I was replacing the hard drive: It was so unbelievably slow. Plus, I didn't have an NVMe SSD lying around, nor the slot that it's plugged into. I had one of the cheaper models that was missing the slot, and I didn't feel like buying one for basically the same performance.