Mac mini vs. Mac Pro savings on electricity bill is amazing!

[EnderBeta]

Either your MP fans were full of accumulated dust or you are purely referring to idle state. Under load the mini already screams where the MP doesn't even raise the fan RPM ...


Did you check your mini's fan for accumulated dust? Also, Apple is infamous for applying too much heat paste. Now if your mini would be affected from that and the heat paste has been drying out over the years, thus losing some cooling capability ...

To be fair: It's only speculation at this point. I'm not aware of related reports on the unibody minis, but Apple's notebooks had their share of that problem. Some reports even claimed to have seen lowered temps in the 10-20 degrees range, after renewing heat paste (including proper application).

I have cleaned the inside of the machine several times now.

I have not checked the thermal paste though. I wonder if mine was applied properly. I'll have to check this weekend.

 

[Celerondon]

...
I have not checked the thermal paste though. I wonder if mine was applied properly. I'll have to check this weekend.

That is a rather invasive "check" is it not?

How exactly would you go about "checking" the paste anyway? In the past, In the past, I always made a conscious decision to renew the paste on X86, AMD, and Cyrix machines before going in. If you are skilled at fiddling with the innards of a Mac mini then you should be fine. Otherwise...

 

[Neodym]

That is a rather invasive "check" is it not?

How exactly would you go about "checking" the paste anyway?

It's delicate for sure and a bit time-consuming, but not exactly rocket-science. As always, there are great guides available from iFixit:

Mac mini heat sink replacement & Thermal paste application.

I disassembled my minis a few times and also replaced the CPU's in my MP1,1. Judging by the above mentioned guides, it is a completely doable thing if one is familiar with heatsinks and thermal paste and has the required tools for the mini. Granted - not for the faint of heart .

I would expect this to take about 1-1.5 hours (tops) for (dis)assembly and another hour for cleaning the old goo (time-consuming) and re-applying the thermal paste. Probably much less, depending on experience.

Edith told me to respond to your "how" question: Checking = replacing

 

[EnderBeta]

That is a rather invasive "check" is it not?

How exactly would you go about "checking" the paste anyway? In the past, In the past, I always made a conscious decision to renew the paste on X86, AMD, and Cyrix machines before going in. If you are skilled at fiddling with the innards of a Mac mini then you should be fine. Otherwise...

No more invasive then when the machine was opened up to add in the data doubler kit and a Intel 240GB SATA3 SSD to the machine.

It's going to be time consuming so it will be this weekend at the soonest when I'll have time to do it.

Plus obviously by check I mean I'm going to clean the old thermal paste off and then reapply new thermal paste.

Edit: Checking thermal paste is the quintessential example of the act of observing something changing the result.

 

[lordofthereef]

Found this page because I am planning on running a mac mini as a plex server. It would also become our main computer, possibly replacing the aging (well, old lol) macbook).

I would *probably* go with the base model, with the possibility of bumping the ram to 16gb for a bit more future proofing (this isn't user servicable is it? If so, I will happily just upgrade myself sometime down the road).