Serious Overheating on New Mac Mini

[AidanBConway]

Hi all I have a new Mac Mini, 2.6 GHZ Intel Core i7 16 GB Ram on OS X 10.8.4
I started folding at home and even on the lite setting all cores are running over 100C and the fan is running flat out to the point i had to turn it off i couldnt sleep

I tried tweaking the settings and even on the very lowest all corse running very hot at 98C fan still noisy

Incidentially without FAH unit is ice cold even under load and fan is silent

[PantherX]

Welcome to the F@H Forum AidanBConway,

Can you please post the log file here so we can see what your current configuration is? With the Light setting, your CPU Usage should only be 50% (assuming F@H is the only application running on the system). Please ensure that the air intake vents aren't being blocked by anything. With inadequate air flow, the CPU can reach high temperatures even with a light load.

[Joe_H]

I do not have a Mini, but do know of others who are successfully folding on them. F@H will load the system more than most other things you can run on them, about the closest comparable load would be recoding video with an app that can utilize multiple cores. So at 50% utilization the cooling system should be able to keep the temperature down.

I am familiar with Apple packaging though, did you make certain that all pieces of protective plastic film were removed? Some of those can block air flow and reduce cooling.

If I have the right model, your i7 is a quad-core. At the Light setting on the slider F@H will be using 4 threads. You can reduce that even more using settings with the advanced control FAHControl. Open FAHControl, click on Configure, select Slots and click on the CPU slot. Use Edit and change the number for CPU threads from -1 to a count less than 4 and then click OK and Save. After pausing and restarting, that is the number of threads F@H will use instead of leaving under control of the slider. At the moment there are very few WU's available for a setting of 1, so at that setting you will likely not get assignments.

Finally, in the past Apple has had some problems with the contracted assembly companies not always applying the heat transfer material correctly. This led to overheating in some laptop and Mini models. They monitor the quality control on this much more closely now, but I include this as a remote possibility to check if you still have heat issues. Even under load your Mac Mini should be at most very warm, not hot.

[AidanBConway]

Welcome to the F@H Forum AidanBConway,

Can you please post the log file here so we can see what your current configuration is? With the Light setting, your CPU Usage should only be 50% (assuming F@H is the only application running on the system). Please ensure that the air intake vents aren't being blocked by anything. With inadequate air flow, the CPU can reach high temperatures even with a light load.

I am not sure what log file you mean ? Noob to fah so can you please advise

[Jesse_V]

I am not sure what log file you mean ? Noob to fah so can you please advise

Not a problem.
1. Open FAHControl.
2. Click the Log tab.
3. Click Refresh at the bottom right.
4. Scroll up to the top.
5. Select all that specifications and whatnot at the top, including the section on your config.
6. Right-click (Control-Click on a Mac? I forget) on it, and select Copy.
7. Paste it in here, in between Code tags:

Code: Select all

[Joe_H]

You can view the log file using the FAHControl interface, and copy and paste from there. Or you can open the log file in TextEdit and copy from there. The logs can be found in the system-wide Library folder. Open that, then look in the Application Support folder for the FAHClient folder. The current log located there is called log.txt, older versions are kept in a log folder.