mac mini overheat?

[miTunes75]

Man......my mac mini overheats, I believe. If I do anything that is "labor intensive" such as encode a large file and so forth, it'll shut down. Currently, I'm encoding a 22 minute HD tv show. Here are the specs right now.....

CPU A 178 degrees
CPU A 209 degrees
Ambient 128 degrees
Northbridge 1 135
Northbridge 2 137
HDD 124

It's running fine right now. It's not enclosed in anything - it sits on top of the hutch of my desk. It's not up against the wall there's at least 8 inches between the airvent and the wall. I just don't get it. ONe day it got so hot, I cooled it in front of an ac vent before I could turn it back on and stay on. Otherwise, it runs just fine.

It's a mac mini 1.66 intel core duo with 2gb memory. Bought it 5 years ago new from the apple store. Currently the programs that I have running is itunes, visual hub and safari.

I just don't know if it'd be worth it to take it to a genus and pay what $200-300 for repair? plus, I haven't purchased snow leopard yet, so it still have 10.4 software on it. superdrive is shot, won't read a disc or anything, keeps spitting everything out....so, I don't know if I should get it repaired or just let the kids use it. But, I don't have an extra $799 lying around to buy another one.

Advise?

 

[GGJstudios]

Those are normal temps. Nothing to worry about.

 

[waloshin]

Normal temperatures don't worry unless it shutdowns automatically.

 

[Mac7]

200 degrees is normal?????

 

[GGJstudios]

200 degrees is normal?????

Yep.

 

[parapup]

Man......my mac mini overheats, I believe. If I do anything that is "labor intensive" such as encode a large file and so forth, it'll shut down. Currently, I'm encoding a 22 minute HD tv show. Here are the specs right now.....

CPU A 178 degrees
CPU A 209 degrees
Ambient 128 degrees
Northbridge 1 135
Northbridge 2 137
HDD 124

Advise?

Do you hear the fans running though? If not may be the fans have failed. I may be wrong but I too did not think 200F was "normal" temperature for that machine.

 

[FourCandles]

May be worth installing something like iStat Pro and making sure that the fan speeds are rising roughly in line with the rise in temps.

 

[miTunes75]

Yes, it has just completely shut off instantly several times. It hasn't done it in awhile, though.

Currently, the fans are running....5498rpm

 

[parapup]

Yes, it has just completely shut off instantly several times. It hasn't done it in awhile, though.

Sounds like the fans have failed - possible after 5 years. Try the routine firmware upgrade if any, resetting PRAM/SMC and see if it improves things. Otherwise I think opening it up and seeing if there is any blockage to the air flow and if the fans work might be another option if you are into that type of thing.

[ Just noticed you posted the Fan speed - so may be it is right and the fans are spinning but if it shuts down abruptly - definite case of overheating.]

 

[chown33]

To me it sounds like it's collected too much dust inside. This can affect heat transfer from the heat sink to surrounding air, and dust can adhere to the fan blades, too, making them less efficient.

I "reverse blast" my Mac mini(s) with a shot of compressed air from a "canned air" product every once in a while. Turn computer off. Stick the nozzle into the rear air-exhaust and give it a short blast. Repeat a few times until no more dust comes out the air intakes (around lower edge of case). Make sure not to hold the can inverted; you don't want liquid freon blasted into the mini. I don't think it'll harm anything unless there's a lot of it, but it doesn't clean off the dust.

If that doesn't work, then opening it up and cleaning it out is likely the only solution.

Also try a fan-speed control program and see if you can manually ramp up the fan speed. If that seems to work but you don't hear the difference (full-speed fans are pretty loud), then I'd guess the fan or fan controller is broken.

 

[fitzdevlin]

mac mini "Overtemp" signal received regularly.

been researching the regular "Overtemp signal" received by my mini (Mac Mini PPC G4/PowerMac 10,1, 1.42GHz, 1G RAM, Tiger 10.4.11) followed by forced sleep since around the time i updated adobe flash a month ago. it goes to sleep whenever i run streaming video or multiple resource-heavy apps. the fan motor seems to top out, wind down and the mini's power light pulsates slowly/softly. if upon waking the mini a video or heavy process is still running, the cpu often sleeps before i can quit any such process.

i tried reverting to an older version of flash to no avail. i have reset both the PMU and PRAM. i've run Disk Utility from the system disk. iStat Pro reports an average of 130°F/55°C. around a year ago i opened, cleaned and upgraded the RAM in my mini in a clean room. can't imagine it could be worse in there than then when the computer functioned fine.

i found out about Narcoleptic Aluminum Powerbook Syndrome, and found a user that had most carefully removed his PB's temperature sensor. is it possible that i have a faulty sensor? bad fan (even though it sounds like it runs clean)? anything else i could potentially fix using iFixit's manuals?

here are my log files:


System log

Console log