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Cooling solutions for the Mac minis?
- Thread starter GoodGuy12345
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Just note, that the gold slabs must be authorized Apple slabs and any other third-party slab will be incompatible. Don't make the same mistake I did.
Disclaimer: In reality, Apple does not sell gold slabs. If they did, I think we all would agree that they would be Rose Gold slabs.
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So I couldn't find any reviews for this, and I think the reason is that they've sold 5 of them.
I know this as I decided to take a gamble and placed an order with them, the order number made it pretty clear I was order number 5, but sod it, if it works it'll be worth it, if not it was worth a punt.
It has so far taken 2 and a half weeks and its just made it to the UK (seemed to have been shipped from USA rather than Canada) but I'll be recording a video review as soon as I get my hands on it (another week if it gets stuck with customs). Fingers crossed it works!
That Speed-Designs product is very slick, I don't see how it couldn't help __some__. Looks like you remove the factory bottom plate, and it kind of "locks" down the cooler, seems like there would be good airflow.
Heck, I had my Minis just sitting on a low profile fan, with LRFs on both sides, and while I'm not sure if the majority of the effect was from it being elevated vs. the fan itself, the Minis definitely ran cooler (I have a larger fan stuck on it's side in my MBP desk stand, and it runs a touch cooler, I think any extra airflow helps a little.)
Heck, I had my Minis just sitting on a low profile fan, with LRFs on both sides, and while I'm not sure if the majority of the effect was from it being elevated vs. the fan itself, the Minis definitely ran cooler (I have a larger fan stuck on it's side in my MBP desk stand, and it runs a touch cooler, I think any extra airflow helps a little.)
Some Canadian retailers ship from the US when serving the US market, and perhaps this company decided to ship from the US for a sale to the UK.
Lee Valley Tools, which you’re probably familiar with if you do any woodworking, does all its shipping to US customers from just across the border: https://www.leevalley.com/
So a quick update from me.
Good news is I have received the cooling device from SPEED Designs.
It's pretty obvious from the packaging that it is a low volume product, but it seems to be well made.
It does fit the Mini like a glove. Which is excellent. I'm less impressed by how loud the fan is, it is a much smaller fan than I expected they fitted an 80mm fan though I honestly can't see why it couldn't have been a 120mm fan, potentially moving at a lower speed and thus being quieter.
I did expect this, but the fan speed is not controllable... so I think there might be some scope to hack this and at the same time upgrading the Delta fan it comes installed with with a Noctua and a variable speed controller thus allowing me to better control the speed. I'm also thinking of getting a mesh that catches some of the dust that I'm now no doubt pumping through the case as well.
The actual aluminium base is very well made, and other than the smaller than expected opening is pretty much perfect. My mini sits on it and rests perfectly the exhaust design is also very good. They did get a lot of this right, and I don't see anyone else making anything close to similar, so well done for trying something different.
Now the part you are all waiting for - I think - how well does it work?
Honestly? Hard to tell.
One thing that is immediately noticeable is with this switched on, my Mac Mini case is cold to touch. Usually it is warm, with this, nope. Obviously there is going to be better airflow regardless given that the bottom plate is no longer on it. I can't see any real impact on network speed which is good - but then again I've found this mini to be unpredictable at best when it comes to that.
I'll do some more testing soon, and I will, as I mentioned be filming a video review too. On that note @F-Train, I'm starting a new channel as my other content wouldn't work well mixed in with reviews, so you'll be able to find me at Hamer Reviews - I'll post the link once it's up.
If anyone has any questions, post them here and I'll answer them as best as I can.
Good news is I have received the cooling device from SPEED Designs.
It's pretty obvious from the packaging that it is a low volume product, but it seems to be well made.
It does fit the Mini like a glove. Which is excellent. I'm less impressed by how loud the fan is, it is a much smaller fan than I expected they fitted an 80mm fan though I honestly can't see why it couldn't have been a 120mm fan, potentially moving at a lower speed and thus being quieter.
I did expect this, but the fan speed is not controllable... so I think there might be some scope to hack this and at the same time upgrading the Delta fan it comes installed with with a Noctua and a variable speed controller thus allowing me to better control the speed. I'm also thinking of getting a mesh that catches some of the dust that I'm now no doubt pumping through the case as well.
The actual aluminium base is very well made, and other than the smaller than expected opening is pretty much perfect. My mini sits on it and rests perfectly the exhaust design is also very good. They did get a lot of this right, and I don't see anyone else making anything close to similar, so well done for trying something different.
Now the part you are all waiting for - I think - how well does it work?
Honestly? Hard to tell.
One thing that is immediately noticeable is with this switched on, my Mac Mini case is cold to touch. Usually it is warm, with this, nope. Obviously there is going to be better airflow regardless given that the bottom plate is no longer on it. I can't see any real impact on network speed which is good - but then again I've found this mini to be unpredictable at best when it comes to that.
I'll do some more testing soon, and I will, as I mentioned be filming a video review too. On that note @F-Train, I'm starting a new channel as my other content wouldn't work well mixed in with reviews, so you'll be able to find me at Hamer Reviews - I'll post the link once it's up.
If anyone has any questions, post them here and I'll answer them as best as I can.
Same! I got it weeks ago, but stayed quiet to wait for another person's response before I call out a response that people may call out to be over exaggerated. The base kept my Mac mini cold, which was weird (for an apple computer), but in general was perfect. Turned up my internal fan, and the air being put into the mini is now efficiently being used to also cool the cpu. Sadly apple poorly programmed the fan curve, so it never speeds up.
That's really interesting to know.
Out of curiosity, what was your order number?
Agreed on the apple fan curve, I've sent mine to about 2,500 - 3,000 and it is still silent but definitely keeps the whole thing cooler.
I was the first to order, I believe, (lol since I was the one on the forums complaining first about cooling) had to try it out and take the risk when ordering. Though it was well worth it.
Regarding your question about the order number, I got cooling base order number 10001, so must be 1 right? Came pretty quick after ordering, since luckily I'm in Canada too. The packing looked fine, didn't really look like a low volume product. It had a nice electrostatic bag with cool patterns as its packaging, but the manual was minimal.
Btw, I set my fan speed at a constant of 2400. Don't really mind the ambient sounds of a computer fan, especially when PC towers sound louder than the base and the Mac mini combined.
Very interesting, thanks for the insight.
My order was number 5 in that case, good to have confirmation of that. In terms of packaging, I don't know, just an anti-static bag and some bubble wrap... I'd expected a proper box if they were planning to ship larger volumes tbh. But hey, it made it over here safely and works well.
I've got a Noctua fan and another with a USB connector and speed controller arriving today, I'll try and work on that over the weekend to see if I can quieten the whole thing down a bit.
Overall very pleased.
If anyone is reading this and is wondering if they should go for one of these speed designs cooling bases for their Mac Mini I'd say if you know you need better cooling because you have a high-intensity workload, it is probably worth it.
That's an enormous amount of money for "probably worth it". Let's see some numbers! Load up handbrake and start a movie encoding to h265 for an hour and post a screenshot of the temps and current processor clock speed. Then we'll know if it's worth it.
No. Mine is cool and silent unless I'm encoding video in handbrake. Aside from handbrake, it's silent. Even transcoding video in plex doesn't ramp it up.
I'm finding it runs pretty warm, when running Premiere Pro and Lightroom it certainly gets warm... for me, I wanted the choice to run it cooler if I wanted to but I do not think it's a necessity. I'm running a pretty heavy encoding session at the moment and might do it without my cooling base running to see what effect it has if I get a chance.
Guess it depends on what your idea of an enormous amount of money is? If we take just the cost of the product, ignore the customs or shipping it was £113. For that price given it's nicely designed and fits well, I'd say it's not too bad to be honest. Sure it's not cheap, but I've spent more on less efficient things but at just over 1/20th of the cost of the Mini I bought, I wouldn't call it an enormous cost... now the eGPU setup I've been looking at, sure that's going to be expensive, but this seems OK to be honest.
I might try and get some hard figures but that'll depend on if I have time... for some it might be worth it, for some it won't. I think at the end of the day, a lot of that will depend on what you do with your Mac...
There's various laptop coolers that look like they could achieve the same thing? Hard to pay $150 for a computer fan in a block of aluminum just because it looks nice.
The only time it gets hot is when it's under 100% CPU load. So if someone isn't running theirs like that there's no need for an external cooler. So that's really what ultimately matters.
If it's possible to post some screenshots of mac fan control and the intel widget showing temps under 100% CPU load I for one would be very appreciative of your time.
I'm encoding video now in the 90c range and my CPU is at 3.6ghz on average, last night was 3.9ghz. Well above base clock speed and it happily runs for hours on end. But with summer approaching the ambient temps will be much hotter.
Laptop coolers would be cheaper, but slapping your Mac mini on top of a keyboard sized cooler looks a bit unprofessional. Unless you would like the DIY look for your set up, the SPEED Designs cooling base looks pretty good on aesthetics for being the same dimensions of the Mac mini. Just like buying Apple (my opinion), yes I admit Apple might cost more than competitors and may not have the latest technology, but Apple sure do know how to make a beautiful product.
Also, isn't 90C a bit on the hot side, damaging for the internals over time when you render enough times.
I don't care how it looks. Only how it functions.
No, it's not too hot. If you use mac fan control it will show you the temp of all the components inside and everything is 30c or more cooler than the CPU when encoding. The system does a very good job of isolating the CPU heat from the rest of the mini.
Apple and Intel are both happy with it running in the 90c range. Otherwise they would have made adjustments to make it run cooler, ramp the fans sooner, throttle the clock speed, etc. But they didn't so they're clearly ok with that. I run all my computers hard and have never experienced any type of heat damage. Not ever. And i've been building computers for decades.
However, like I mentioned summer is approaching and the ambient temps will come up. Which will likely bring the clock speeds down and make my encodes take longer so i'd like to cool it more. I'd just like to see what sort of numbers I can expect before I spend the money.
You pop off the bottom panel.
My question is how does the thing keep dust out? I don't see a filter on it. Filling a computer with dust will ramp the temps and you'll have to open the mini up to clean it out periodically.
I'm sure one could find something to stuff in the fan opening to filter the dust out.
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Oh. That's just a terrible idea. It's hard enough to deal with dust with the current design, just having it open from the bottom...nah. I rather not.
I do wonder though if a laptop cooler would work with a mac mini. I have a late 2012 and I wouldn't mind seeing it survive a few more years.
Stagnant air is what puts dust in computer cases, just like those old pcs with bad air flow. The air has enough time to settle. If there is strong airflow then the air would keep moving around, and won't have enough time to settle with the dust.
I have cases loaded with fans, intake and exhaust, these things are wind tunnels. Dust builds up really bad. The fans suck the dust in despite having filters on the intake fans.
My main PC is 4 120mm intake fans with 5 120mm and 3 80mm exhaust fans(the case is a big cube).
My imac was loaded with dust. A secondary computer is a coolermaster stacker case. 3 120mm intake fans with dust filters and several exhaust fans in the top, side and back. Still full of dust.
I believe the issue must be the filters, if they are blocking the air, the airflow will be slowed down so that dust has time to settle and build up. I got a PC that I specially had the same number of exact fans for intake and outake. Only started to see a layer of dust after a good 8 months.