Mac Mini Pro M4 in the heat - too hot and noisy?

[monkey6]

Fan noise and heat are my concerns, not with the base model, but with the Pro.

My Mac Mini M4 512 24 did just find with my 15 track or so Apple Logic project, which uses live audio recording. I was using a RME UCX II interface, and an external OWC with a 2TB 990PRO. Never heard the fans come on, and it only got warm, never hot. That's was in January, in my sunny back room.

Then the mini died. It couldn't connect to the internet - wired or wireless - at more than 10 mps when it was in the 900s when I first got it. Called Apple, then had me try a few things, and then said to return it. Back to Costco it went (they have a great 3 month return policy).

So now I'm not sure if I want to replace it with the same, or upgrade to the Mac Mini Pro.

Why? The Pro offers more choices on resolutions for different monitors, with text reportedly displaying crisp, which when using the base version leaves some resolutions a tad blurry. I speak from experience, as I didn't have a 5K monitor to connect, and after using a5K display in my old 2017 imac, I'm used to a sharp display, and the mini won't work as well as it should have with my monitors. (can anyone comment on their experience with this?)

And the Pro would be obviously be more future proof than the base model. And a bit quicker, although I'm not sure than would significantly impact what I do. Not a gamer, only do light Photoshop projects, nothing intensive.

But what is holding me back from getting the Pro are the reports of how the Pro runs hot.

My sunny backroom is not air conditioned, and it gets in the 80s and 90s in the summer back there. If the Pro is hot in January, what would it be like in my back room in summer? How hot will the unit get, and will the fans run loud?

So Is anyone from the southern hemisphere where it's hot now, and/or using it in any other hot environment, able to report on real world use of the Pro in such temps? Is it extremely hot when the ambient air is in the 80s or 90s? Do the fans kick in so that it would interfere with audio recording?

 

[Kenny99]

You could get a Mini Fridge and put the M4 in it and a USB-C hub so you wouldn't need to keep opening it to make any connections in the Summer.

 

[ericwn]

Apples stuff has two weeks return period. I recommend to test it out in your specific sunny environment and if it doesn’t work out send it right back.

 

[VitoBotta]

It seems like your unit might be having some issues. My M4 Pro mini, on the other hand, is really quiet and cool. The only time I hear the fans is when I'm running larger LLMs, like Qwen2.5 with 32 billion parameters.

 

[G5isAlive]

I can't comment on your specifics of sunny back room in the summer, what I can tell you is my M4 mini pro fans do cut in when its pushed to 100% CPU for an extended period of time at about 45 decibels from sitting next to it.

 

[decipherkl]

I have the base M4 Pro Mac Mini and it is in a room that is usually in the mid-20s. I use it mainly for productivity (with quite a number of apps open) and I have yet experienced the fan speed going above 1000rpm. This is also true after trying a couple of games. I checked my iStat Menus history over the last 28 days and the highest temperature reached was lower than 70C and the fan speed never exceeded 1000rpm. So whatever I was doing had not been enough to ramp up the fan speed.

Edit: I have the M4 Pro Mac Mini connected to 1 4TB USB SSD, an active speaker, and 1 Dell 38" monitor (sometimes 2, the second being 27") with quite a number of devices attached (keyboard, trackpad, microphone, apple watch on its charger) to its USB hub.