is it possible to replace the mac mini FAN for more silence ?

[MacHamster68]

only max 3 wires and usually they are color coded , dont know how it is in the mini itself but usually there are a red and a black wire which should be the same on the fan
and a white or yellow one, the white or yellow is normally for the mainboard to control the fan speed and for the mainboard to know that there is a fan if you do a hardware test

 

[macchiato2009]

so far the shell script to get a fan speed of 1500 rpm works

but it's no more active when the mac gets out of sleep

 

[Jason Beck]

When you put the mini back together did you put the temperature sensor on the new hard drive?

 

[macchiato2009]

i did

but the sensor is probably damaged

 

[Jason Beck]

i did

but the sensor is probably damaged

I was thinking that. Maybe look on eBay for a trashed mini and use it for parts?

 

[macchiato2009]

well trying to upgrade the mini myself proved me that i am not good at doing this kind of stuff

so i'm thinking of selling it

next time i'll have the machine upgraded by someone who is certified

in the meantime, if someone knows how to make a shell script work at launch time and after going back from sleep, it would be very useful

thx

 

[quantum003]

Well if you think about it... from what I understand your Mini's fan is running way faster than you would like it to. So unless you believe the fan is just broken and out of it's mind, it's probably running that fast because it feels like it needs to be desperately cooling something. In my belief, that means you either did not put apply a new thermal pad to the processor after you opened the mini, or your thermal hard drive cable is not attached, or is bad, or god forbid, you yanked it too hard and destroyed the pin on the motherboard that it connects to.

if you think the hard drive thermal cable is bad, don't just throw away your mini and don't sell it for parts.. that's ludicrous. You opened it and caused this, open it again and fix it. Here's a $20 thermal hard drive cable on Ebay. The guy has 3 of them:

$20 thermal hard drive cable

 

[macchiato2009]

in the first place, it was quiet

but not silent, while running at 1500 rpm


then i was very stubborn and decided to open it again, this time, it became worth and it ended up with a fan running full speed at all times starting from the boot

 

[Jason Beck]

Well if you think about it... from what I understand your Mini's fan is running way faster than you would like it to. So unless you believe the fan is just broken and out of it's mind, it's probably running that fast because it feels like it needs to be desperately cooling something. In my belief, that means you either did not put apply a new thermal pad to the processor after you opened the mini, or your thermal hard drive cable is not attached, or is bad, or god forbid, you yanked it too hard and destroyed the pin on the motherboard that it connects to.

if you think the hard drive thermal cable is bad, don't just throw away your mini and don't sell it for parts.. that's ludicrous. You opened it and caused this, open it again and fix it. Here's a $20 thermal hard drive cable on Ebay. The guy has 3 of them:

$20 thermal hard drive cable

I agree, I think he did something to the cable on accident. That was cool for you to provide that link. OP just grab that cable off ebay and replace it.

 

[ruftytufty]

there are places that repair (not just replace) motherboards. e.g. this place on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/APPLE-A1150-A11...ltDomain_0?hash=item3a59347fa2#ht_2082wt_1083

also "laptopmedic" on ebay, but they have some bad feedback on ebay and also ripoffreport.com.

may be other places as well.

but, since you've identified the damaged area, if you could get some good closeup photos of the problem, and send them to such a place, they might be able to give you an idea of whether the problem is reparable.

otherwise, the Zalman approach sounds like a good one.

 

[macchiato2009]

thx but i live in Europe...

moreover i have wasted enough time and money so far

just ordered a new mac mini...

 

[MacHamster68]

but the hint about thermal paste is a thing to look after , cant harm to renew the thermal paste ,

and to give you a bit confidence back , nobody was born as a expert , we all had to learn and are still learning and all did mistakes on that way , some are only to proud to admit it .
So as you ordered already a new mini , and even you said you keep your hands from that one ,
now you got a chance to learn on your already a bit faulty mini , dont just sell it on ,try to fix it , and don't give up if it doesn't work in the first couple attempts

 

[macchiato2009]

i was just a fool who believed that because others could do it, i would do it too

it was a costly mistake for me

my newly ordered mac mini will be upgraded by an apple center, no more risks...

and when i'll have time, i'll try to find a solution for this one

in the meantime, i'll use the script (but if someone knows how to make a script work at all times - at startup and after a sleep - it would be fantastic)


i'll take time to study all the advices, fanmate, thermal paste, etc...


thx again !!

 

[fhall1]

From http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Mac_mini_Late2009_UG.pdf

That quite clearly says that opening Mini DOES VOID your warranty.

No...what it says is "If you open your Mac mini or install items, you risk damaging your equipment, and such damage isn’t covered by the limited warranty on your Mac mini. "

The simple act of opening your Mini does not void the warranty....but if you damage anything while you have it open the part you damage is not covered. There are plenty of threads at 123macmini.com where folks have opened their Minis to upgrade RAM or HDDs and had Apple repair other, unrelated problems under warranty.

It's a fine distinction....but it's there

 

[Hellhammer]

No...what it says is "If you open your Mac mini or install items, you risk damaging your equipment, and such damage isn’t covered by the limited warranty on your Mac mini. "

The simple act of opening your Mini does not void the warranty....but if you damage anything while you have it open the part you damage is not covered. There are plenty of threads at 123macmini.com where folks have opened their Minis to upgrade RAM or HDDs and had Apple repair other, unrelated problems under warranty.

It's a fine distinction....but it's there

Well, Apple can say that the issue is because you opened it and broke something... I wouldn't play with fire, sure they can fix it under warranty but on the other hand they can refuse to fix it. It's very hard to prove that YOU didn't break anything, especially in this case for example. If the logic board is fried, then it has nothing to do with opening it but Apple can still REFUSE to fix it

 

[macchiato2009]

No...what it says is "If you open your Mac mini or install items, you risk damaging your equipment, and such damage isn’t covered by the limited warranty on your Mac mini. "

The simple act of opening your Mini does not void the warranty....but if you damage anything while you have it open the part you damage is not covered. There are plenty of threads at 123macmini.com where folks have opened their Minis to upgrade RAM or HDDs and had Apple repair other, unrelated problems under warranty.

It's a fine distinction....but it's there

the apple techs are not stupid

if something inside the mini is damaged, unless you opened the box without leaving any mark, warranty will be void

if they notice that the box was open, they will ask if you did something or if it was opened by a certified apple center

again, i've been confirmed yesterday by apple and also my repair center that only them could open it and not void the warranty


i took the risk and now i'm paying the price for it

the inside and the edges of the casing are scratched

you can see it outside and inside

if i had accepted to send it to applecare or another repair service, they would have seen it...

and i would have been charged even with no repair


from now on, i will only change ram or hdd on machines that are user-serviceable only

 

[fhall1]

the apple techs are not stupid

if something inside the mini is damaged, unless you opened the box without leaving any mark, warranty will be void

if they notice that the box was open, they will ask if you did something or if it was opened by a certified apple center

again, i've been confirmed yesterday by apple and also my repair center that only them could open it and not void the warranty


i took the risk and now i'm paying the price for it

the inside and the edges of the casing are scratched

you can see it outside and inside

if i had accepted to send it to applecare or another repair service, they would have seen it...

and i would have been charged even with no repair


from now on, i will only change ram or hdd on machines that are user-serviceable only

I didn't say they were stupid....you could leave the case exterior and insides pristine, but if they look up your s/n and it says the machine came with 2GB RAM and it now has 4GB RAM, they'll know you were in it.

Like I said, there are threads on the other site I mentioned where folks have upgraded their Mini's RAM and/or HDD and Apple did fix an (unrelated) hardware problem under warranty.

Like you said - you opened it and took your chances, now something's f'd up...my only point is simply opening your Mini (or iMac) does not void the warranty...but as HH also said, it does give Apple ammo if they want to be nasty about it.

 

[quantum003]

i was just a fool who believed that because others could do it, i would do it too

it was a costly mistake for me

my newly ordered mac mini will be upgraded by an apple center, no more risks...

and when i'll have time, i'll try to find a solution for this one

in the meantime, i'll use the script (but if someone knows how to make a script work at all times - at startup and after a sleep - it would be fantastic)


i'll take time to study all the advices, fanmate, thermal paste, etc...


thx again !!

Are you seriously asking other people to take time out of their lives to write a script for you, to resolve this problem that you created, because you can't be bothered to put in the 20 minutes of effort it would take for you to solve this problem yourself?

Here's the long and short of it, friend. Computer guts are fragile but not *that* fragile. If you broke something in there, you would know it. If you pulled too hard on the thermal cable and broke the pin, you would know it, so I don't think you did that. I think if you took the time to just open the stupid mac mini again you would see that you didn't even reconnect the thermal cable at all. That's why your fan is running full blast. How do I know this?! Because I've done the exact same thing! EXACT same thing with the EXACT same result. Open the stupid mac mini and re-attach the thermal cable. If you're not even willing to do that, then don't ask others to take time to write a script for you, because you're clearly not willing to exert any energy at all to help yourself.

 

[macchiato2009]

already tried that. i guess that the thermal cable is damaged. replugging it doesn't make any change

just got a new thermal cable thanks to a friend, i'll replace the actual one

 

[adrianf]

Same problem

Hey all,
I recently bough a C2D mac mini (2.0Ghz 2GB RAM GMA950 graphics) off a colleague and am trying to sort out the fan issues on it. It's definitely related to the GPU, generally scrolling a web page (like this one) will escalate the fan up until eventually reaching 5000 RPM, while the CPU is still idle. At that speed it's very noisy, and seems completely unnecessary given the load.
My two options at this point seem to be either to downgrade to Leopard in case it's a software issue, or to try replacing the fan.
However replacing the fan would not seem to address the speed at which the fan is spinning. Does any one have any feedback on how fast I would expect this thing to spin given the usage I've described? The box is sitting in an open space on the desk and the room temp is < 20C. CPU and other temps never exceed 50C.

thanks

 

[Stan Mikulenka]

Hi adrianf,
try the Fan Control.prefPane where you can adjust just about anything related to Fan speed. The Control Panet looks like this:

 

[adrianf]

Hi,
thanks for the post however I don't think that this tool is very effective. Attached is a screenshot; you can see I am able to get the fan up above 5000RPM by scrolling the browser even though the temp remains down around the lower threshold. The graph would also not appear to use the fan speed properly.

 

[billib]

More ptmd

Launch your "Activities Monitor" located in your Utilities folder.
In the Activities Monitor's Menu Bar select "All Processes" from
the Drop Down Menu. Then scroll down and find "ptmd" select it
and hit "Quit Process". That should stop your Processor from
being hammered which is probably why your temp. is so high.
Its a known bug. Apple should fix it with a future update.