Agreed. But there are reports of users having their ears pressed against the mini and it being dead silent (switched on of course). Wondering if that's possible at all...
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So how silent is the M2 Pro Mac Mini?
- Thread starter Freida
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Is it louder than an Intel Macbook Pro from 2019 trying to open google chrome? 
i find that, when i press my ear to my mini, it's really hard to type, and to see my monitor. but i'll do it (only for a month or two), so i can report on fan noise during real-world usage 🤣
Just registered to make my little contribution after months following this and the Mac Studio noise problems threads.
I’m one of those who bought and returned a Studio last year.
Mac mini M2 Pro 12/19c-32GB-1TB.
At the normal work position, like 1m from it, I hear nothing.
If I put my ear 3cm at its back side, I can hear a noise similar to the old hard drives reading data.
I have a 2017 iMac next to it. With the two turned on at the same distance from me, I can hear the little “breath” of the iMac (not annoying), but I can’t hear the Mini.
I’ve done a few tests exporting video with Compressor and After Effects. The iMac gets the “jet engine” mode, the Mini doesn’t.
I would love to know if anyone else is having that “rubbing noise” when having the ear next to the back. This is completely tolerable for me as I hear nothing at the normal work position, but just to confirm I don’t have a bad unit.
Sorry for my ****** english. And thanks to all who help others on this forum ☺️
I’m one of those who bought and returned a Studio last year.
Mac mini M2 Pro 12/19c-32GB-1TB.
At the normal work position, like 1m from it, I hear nothing.
If I put my ear 3cm at its back side, I can hear a noise similar to the old hard drives reading data.
I have a 2017 iMac next to it. With the two turned on at the same distance from me, I can hear the little “breath” of the iMac (not annoying), but I can’t hear the Mini.
I’ve done a few tests exporting video with Compressor and After Effects. The iMac gets the “jet engine” mode, the Mini doesn’t.
I would love to know if anyone else is having that “rubbing noise” when having the ear next to the back. This is completely tolerable for me as I hear nothing at the normal work position, but just to confirm I don’t have a bad unit.
Sorry for my ****** english. And thanks to all who help others on this forum ☺️
I ordered a mini pro yesterday. Initially thought id get away with the base M2 256gb with 16gb RAM but by the time i added the likely requirement of a fast external NVMe drive (~£200) , I was close to a Pro with 16GB/1TB so ordered that instead for £1382 all in from an official apple dealer on Ebay. A good deal I think
ouch 🤣
i krazy-glued a stethoscope to mine, and just listen thru that. fortunately, my headphones can sit comfortably over the stethoscope earpieces when i work. this way i can monitor the fans and mix 👍
Thank you for the PTSD.Is it louder than an Intel Macbook Pro from 2019 trying to open google chrome?
I kind of find it funny that fan noise today is a big concern for Mac users.
It's not like the Apple Silicon chip models sound like a Jet fighter trying to take off like what is common on business laptops or gaming PCs.
Are we talking under 50db or even lower and people are loosing it, or just super nit picky where headphones or playing light 'latenight' lofty type of Jazz music would drown out and place into a trance to focus on work.
I have a kitten that meows a few minutes in the morning right at my bedroom door when I'm working from home, a year old baby right next door that has discovered his voice and blurts out a new word daily lol (too cute) and some nonsense from a couple above me fighting daily with their window open and mine open for air ... THAT is noise but headphones on and I continue to focus on work - NOT the noise that can simply be drowned out.
Fan noise ... is everyone focusing too much on the noise NOT the work the fan needs to do to get done - COOLING the machine?! Wondering if the focus is being lost here.
Got mine today, incidentally, and it's safe to say that it's quiet.
I think the point here was that some people took "dead silent" literally and were troubled that their machines might have an issue if they could hear the fan moving and air flowing out of the back of the Mini from 2 inches away. Which you definitely can, unless it's switched off.
Granted, not a real-world scenario and irrelevant in practice.
The paradox of noise is the more quiet something is the more we notice when it makes any kind of noise. When my old PC is doing a code build and sounding like a jet engine somehow that's less bothersome than the low whine it emits when idle. It's like three uncanny valley of silence
Makes sense 😊 However, when you do vocal recordings it’s more absolute (as opposed to relative) how much background noise is picked up from the mic.
I read that the mac mini has a 1690rpm fan, is that correct?
On my Mac Pro (2013), it runs at 790 (and maximum 1900)
That seems a lot for a small device (Mac mini)
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That's precisely the issue we are discussing. Some funny guy told us here to eat crackers instead of being so annoying. But inside my recording booth, I normally run my mic's preamp with Low Cut and 15 dB PAD because of a fan I shouldn't hear if I pay top dollar. And still today, you cannot have pro-level audio with wireless fidelity. But good news! After 15 days of waiting, the Mac Mini M2 Pro 12 c GPU, 19 GPU, 32 GB, and 2 TB for which I paid €3,179 taxes included. Yes! Europeans love to pay taxes and false parity Dollar Euro, which is exactly $3,317
am having a great time with this on my (humble) m2 mini, and one of my collabs is working on a new mac studio... and also having a good experience.... 👍Oh yeah, pro audio work is an entirely different matter. The unfortunately named Mac Studio may not be suitable for... the studio
I've had my M2 Pro Mac Mini for over 5 weeks. 12/19, 32GB, 2TB.
I have never heard the fan at all before today (*). Even though I regularly use handbrake and have cpus maxed for an hour or more at a time.
Strangely, I had just finished watching a video today when the fan spun up, and was quite loud. The body was its normal cool temp, the cpus were doing nothing. It stayed on for maybe 10 minutes, then went back to normal.
iStat Menus has never shown any temp sensors since I got this thing (**), so couldn’t tell if something was high. I tried its option to reset sensors to no avail. After this episode today I uninstalled it and re-installed, and now I have all the sensors availble to view. So if this happens again I’ll have something to look at.
After it was back to normal, I used handbrake to transcode a video, it took over an hour, and the body was quite warm, but the fan was never loud enough to hear.
Can’t figure out what caused this.
* I have a large-ish aquarium 6 feet away that circulates >900 gallons of water per hour, so it's not really quiet in here.
** I migrated from an M1 mac mini, so there must've been some M1 remnants in the iStat Menus config that goofed it up.
I have never heard the fan at all before today (*). Even though I regularly use handbrake and have cpus maxed for an hour or more at a time.
Strangely, I had just finished watching a video today when the fan spun up, and was quite loud. The body was its normal cool temp, the cpus were doing nothing. It stayed on for maybe 10 minutes, then went back to normal.
iStat Menus has never shown any temp sensors since I got this thing (**), so couldn’t tell if something was high. I tried its option to reset sensors to no avail. After this episode today I uninstalled it and re-installed, and now I have all the sensors availble to view. So if this happens again I’ll have something to look at.
After it was back to normal, I used handbrake to transcode a video, it took over an hour, and the body was quite warm, but the fan was never loud enough to hear.
Can’t figure out what caused this.
* I have a large-ish aquarium 6 feet away that circulates >900 gallons of water per hour, so it's not really quiet in here.
** I migrated from an M1 mac mini, so there must've been some M1 remnants in the iStat Menus config that goofed it up.