Mac Mini M4 Pro gaming / temperature questions

[tomstone74]

Hi,

I'm a happy owner of a Mac Mini M4 Pro 14c/20c/64GB/2TB config. Such a great tiny machine, with basic focus on software development, beside usual daily stuff.

Beside work with the Mini, I want to get into occasional light gaming again, just for pure fun. Things like Starcraft 2, Warcraft III, I have a few purchases on Steam as well, mainly PC titles. I also still have a Windows DeskMini X300 with a AMD 5600G around (somewhere in the basement), but not in use anymore since I have purchased the Mac Mini. Fully converted to a Mac.

The Mac Mini is basically placed in an almost closed book shelf at the top of a Synology NAS and not on the desk, due to space and wiring reasons. Maybe important for below temp question.

• Starcraft 2 seems to work fine via Battle.net MacOS version at 1080p with temperatures of up to ~ 85°C over a prolonged time. Upped to 1440p and even 2160p (own a 4K monitor), with playable FPS, but gives me constant ~ 100°C (or beyond) with fan speed in the area of 2500rpm or above according to TG Pro. Is this a concern running in that temp areas over hours maybe? Placed some basic temperature measurement thingy on the top of Mac Mini which gave me ~36°C surrounding temperature in the closed book shelf
• For Steam titles, when there is a MacOS version of a title, Intel-based though (=> Rosetta), it's still preferred installing the MacOS version and not the PC version via Crossover then I guess?
• For PC titles on Steam (older titles, no recent AAA), I will give Crossover a try. Purchased a license on Cyber Monday. Combined with above, I guess the two Steam client variants (MacOS version and Windows version via Crossover) can easily co-exist?
• Does MacOS provide some sort of OOTB performance monitoring overlay during gaming (FPS, GPU, CPU usage ...)? Similar to what e.g. AMD Adrenalin provides on Windows?

Thanks a lot for some thoughts!

 

[Brian33]

Hi. I've had a Mac Mini with M4 Pro chip, 12c/16c/24GB/512GB, for the past year as my main machine, with Apple Studio Display. Note that I have fewer cores and a lot less memory than you do.

I don't play many games, but have been playing Baldur's Gate 3 and Valheim (both official macOS ports, not using Crossover) on this Mini, and it's worked out quite well. BG3 is the most demanding. I'm playing it four or five hours at a stretch, in Act 2 at 1440 x 2560 resolution, with video Overall Preset at High (not Ultra), so all settings are at High.

I'm using iStat Menus 7 to get these approximate numbers:

performance core temps 90 to 103 degrees C
gpu 90 to 105 degrees C
fan 2500 to 3115 (max) RPM (yes, that's audible, but acceptable to me)
memory pressure around 34%
Mac Mini's exit air temp (behind the Mini) about 40 degrees C
Game Mode appears to be on (paused when I shift focus away from the fullscreen game)
frame rate is usually 50 to 60 fps, though I've seen it go into the 40s, according to the Steam overlay

The fans don't seem to ramp up until chip temps get close to 100 (C). I think that Apple purposely designed it this way. I know there are many with vocal opinions about allowable temperatures, with their scary sounding assertions. I think that the Apple engineers have set up the cooling system so that it can run for hours that way and be fine. No issues so far, anyway. I recommend you actually *do* stress the machine within the first year. In case an issue comes up, the warranty will still be in effect.

 

[tomstone74]

@Brian33 thanks a lot for your insights. Seems I'm good to go with my Mini then to our annual Starcraft 2 party early January

 

[yellowhelicopter]

I'm using iStat Menus to auto adjust fan speed on Mac Mini M4, works great. Never more than 83-85C with default profile. In most games it's about 60-65C. The fan is often audible, but I prefer that to high SoC temperatures.

 

[Solarflares]

I put off the idea of buying a Pro Mini for music, as I suspected the fan would be an audible issue.
Lot of circuitry for a small box.
You could mitigate it slightly by putting all external peripherals on a good quality hub, like a Razer Chroma. Might save a few watts on the Mini’s PSU.
My Mini has little silicone feet to raise it a little, which may also help.

 

[tomstone74]

After some serious attempts on my MM4 Pro with Crossover, although Starcraft 2 seems to work fine without Crossover but going through Rosetta, I decided to go back to my Windows DeskMini X300 AMD 5600G with iGPU setup for my occasional gaming of mostly Steam titles + SC2.

While Crossover might work for some Youtube-hyped (in combination with Crossover) titles like RDR2 and others, none of my attempted Steam titles e.g. Giana Sisters, Forza Horizon 5 ... did even start with Crossover.

As long as the 5600G is doing somehow fine, I will stick with that. Thought about maybe an upgrade to a 8600G, but this would mean replacing close to everything, as being AM5. Maybe I will see what the Steam Machine will be about early next year for replacing the X300 AMD 5600G combo for gaming.

 

[maflynn]

After some serious attempts on my MM4 Pro with Crossover, although Starcraft 2 seems to work fine without Crossover but going through Rosetta, I decided to go back to my Windows DeskMini X300 AMD 5600G with iGPU setup for my occasional gaming of mostly Steam titles + SC2.

Late to the thread but I was in a similar situation as you.

I first was looking to get a Mac Mini - base model, but the more I investigated, the more I realized the base level was just not configured optimally for my needs

i went and bought the M4 Pro Mini and was largely dissatisfied due to the heat generated (and the poor cooling capability) and the gaming performance with crossover. I returned the mini and instead opted for the M4 Max studio (base model) and now gaming is excellent, very happy with how it performs.

One of my concerns in buying a mini, is that I'll be using the Mini for some things, the PC for other things but I know my habits, and one of the computers would largely be relegated to non-use and it would be the mini simply because my PC was more powerful in gaming. So the studio made more sense because it would become my main machine, particularly helpful beacuse I'm hating how MS is changing windows, lack of privacy, telemetry, and the AI stuff. I really wanted to leave the windows platform. The studio allowed me to do that, unlike the Mini, though the base model mini is an incredible deal and computer - it just didn't fit my needs

For comparison sake, here's how my testing went, I own all the listed computers except for the M2 Max Studio - googling provided the numbers there, so take that with a grain of salt.

 

[tomstone74]

Thanks a lot for sharing!

Main intention for getting my M4 Pro Mini 14c/20c/64GB/2TB was luckily not for gaming of course, but mainly for day2day stuff, software development, playing with local AI/LLM (thus the 64GB) etc ..., although I wished I can get away with that for occasional gaming as well.

At the time of the purchase, IIRC, the M4 Max Studio wasn't available resp. I found the Mini super attractive regarding its extremely compact size, the power supply even integrated in the chassis etc ... which fits perfectly into my limited work space situation. It's a wonderful machine for above use cases and non-sustained workloads and due to the 64GB, I can even work with a Qwen-Next 80B local LLM, which fits into that.

Haven't really looked at the Studio yet, but alone that I would need to go with the 40 GPU core option (+ 375 EUR) to configure 64GB RAM feels rather strange for my usage. I think the M4 Pro Mini will fit me for many years combined with maybe a Steam Machine for gaming at some point and/or occasionally a monthly Geforce Now subscription.

 

[sublunar]

I'm concerned about fan noise from the Mini for video exports too. I'd either have a well upgraded base model (although reluctant due to depreciation) or an M4 Max Studio (again for the silence factor).

An M2 Max Mac Studio in the UK is decent value but I've compared with M4 and then notionally M5 (some benchmarks from the MBP14) and then you figure in many more years support plus hardware ray tracing.

The later generation M series CPUs have vastly superior single core and still very good multicore.

Is coil whine still an issue for the later model Mac Studio? Heard early model issues around the time of the M1 Max reviews but not much since then.

 

[Brian33]

@tomston -- I should have mentioned my limited gaming has been only with Steam and official macOS ports of a few games. I've never tried crossover. Thanks for you experience with crossover for games.

@mafly -- thanks for the benchmark numbers, I found them interesting. You can really see the effect of the extra 16 GPU cores for the M4 Max Studio over the M4 Pro Mini in the Cinebench GPU and 3d Mark benchmarks.

In summer 2024 I had been long waiting for an M3 Max Studio, which never materialized. I really wanted a Studio, but when the M4 Pro Mini came out in Fall of 2024 I contented myself with that. I'm mostly glad I did, but was quite surprised when the M4 Max Studio came out in Feb(?) or so, 2025. I might have waited to get the Studio if I had known, as I tend to keep my Macs quite a long time.

@sublunar -- Other than gaming, I've noticed my M4 Pro Mac Mini's fan noise while I was using ffmpeg to encode digital video (.dv) movies to AVC/H.264. I don't remember the fan RPM, but I think all 12 cpu cores were 100% busy and the fan sound was quite noticeable. It didn't bother me as most of that time I wasn't in the room. The fan noise from my gaming is definitely less, plus I usually use headphones whie gaming so it isn't an issue for me.

I read quite a lot of the Studio "coil whine" threads, as I was hoping to get one at the time. It seems to me that the best explanation was related to the characteristics of various individual's home electrical power delivery utility. It appears that even a neighbor's EV car charging equipment could cause changes to the AC power (wave form?) that interacted negatively with the Studio's power supply. I don't know of any changes made to the Studio's power supply since the M1 version. But I concluded that the issue was unlikely to surface for me, and if it did I could use Apple's 14-day return period.

 

[sublunar]

@tomston -- I should have mentioned my limited gaming has been only with Steam and official macOS ports of a few games. I've never tried crossover. Thanks for you experience with crossover for games.

@mafly -- thanks for the benchmark numbers, I found them interesting. You can really see the effect of the extra 16 GPU cores for the M4 Max Studio over the M4 Pro Mini in the Cinebench GPU and 3d Mark benchmarks.

In summer 2024 I had been long waiting for an M3 Max Studio, which never materialized. I really wanted a Studio, but when the M4 Pro Mini came out in Fall of 2024 I contented myself with that. I'm mostly glad I did, but was quite surprised when the M4 Max Studio came out in Feb(?) or so, 2025. I might have waited to get the Studio if I had known, as I tend to keep my Macs quite a long time.

@sublunar -- Other than gaming, I've noticed my M4 Pro Mac Mini's fan noise while I was using ffmpeg to encode digital video (.dv) movies to AVC/H.264. I don't remember the fan RPM, but I think all 12 cpu cores were 100% busy and the fan sound was quite noticeable. It didn't bother me as most of that time I wasn't in the room. The fan noise from my gaming is definitely less, plus I usually use headphones whie gaming so it isn't an issue for me.

I read quite a lot of the Studio "coil whine" threads, as I was hoping to get one at the time. It seems to me that the best explanation was related to the characteristics of various individual's home electrical power delivery utility. It appears that even a neighbor's EV car charging equipment could cause changes to the AC power (wave form?) that interacted negatively with the Studio's power supply. I don't know of any changes made to the Studio's power supply since the M1 version. But I concluded that the issue was unlikely to surface for me, and if it did I could use Apple's 14-day return period.

Isn’t ffmpeg a fully software product that doesn’t use the hardware encoders by default? Hence all cpu cores running at full blast as you’ve not mentioned triggering the hardware encoder.

If you were to export using Apple compressor (or the encoder switch on command line) it would use the hardware h264 encoder which on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro just exports in silence very quickly without triggering all the cpu cores.