My Mac Mini just did the weirdest thing ever

[Silly John Fatty]

So I was using my Mini just normally, surfing the web, no big apps running, when suddenly I started hearing the fans, which I usually never or almost never do (or at least I believe it was the fans, I mean what else could sound like that …).

Over a period of approximately one minute, they became louder and louder, to the point they were so loud, I decided to put the Mac to sleep. Suddenly, in maybe one second, everything stopped. After a few seconds, it restarted (super loud straight away). I decided to "wake" the Mac (but apparently it was already awake, or at least it was doing something with those fans), which stopped the fans again.

Then I restarted it and now I'm writing here and everything seems fine.

What. the. hell. just. happppppenned?

Has anyone else ever experienced this? I want to return this now. I've had it for a few months. It obviously doesn't work the way it should. I bought it refurbished by the way (in the Apple online store).

 

[Juicy Box]

did you recently update to OS to Sonoma?

 

[Silly John Fatty]

did you recently update to OS to Sonoma?

Good point that I forgot to mention, I in fact did not! I'm still using Ventura.

 

[LeeW]

What were you browsing? Some websites are just so bad they can cause this.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

What were you browsing? Some websites are just so bad they can cause this.

Just a national online market place (biggest such platform in the country over here and very trustworthy I'd say), and also reverb.com, another market place that is used for selling music gear.

I think that is it. Maybe I had some other sites open, but I don't remember which.

How can websites cause things like that? Is my Mac infected with malware now?

 

[Juicy Box]

Is my Mac infected with malware now?

Probably not, I think what @LeeW was referring to was glitches in the app or OS causing memory or CPU leaks, which could basically max out your CPU, causing the fans to spin up.

Using ending the process that caused the issue fixes it, or a restart.

If it happens again, maybe check tgr Activity app in Utilities folder and see what is going on there.

 

[HDFan]

If it happens again, maybe check tgr Activity app in Utilities folder and see what is going on there.

Look at cpu and memory use, sorted highest>lowest to see if that shows anything.

There are apps such as istat menus which allow you to see sensor values - temperature, fan speed, etc.

 

[Juicy Box]

There are apps such as istat menus which allow you to see sensor values - temperature, fan speed, etc.

I use iStat Menus, and highly recommend it.

Very easy to see what is going on with CPU, GPU, Memory, drives, and many sensors.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

Probably not, I think what @LeeW was referring to was glitches in the app or OS causing memory or CPU leaks, which could basically max out your CPU, causing the fans to spin up.

Using ending the process that caused the issue fixes it, or a restart.

If it happens again, maybe check tgr Activity app in Utilities folder and see what is going on there.

Look at cpu and memory use, sorted highest>lowest to see if that shows anything.

There are apps such as istat menus which allow you to see sensor values - temperature, fan speed, etc.

I sadly didn't look in that moment. I should have, now it's gone and it behaves normally. But I'm still annoyed about what it could have been, it feels like someone dirtied my Mac.