Mac mini fan always on?

On Fri, 13 May 2005 20:11:20 GMT, zeroeseight scrawled:

Thanks for the info. Would you class the mini as silent though? Seems a bit contrary to the reviews I had read where they say it is silent until the fans kick in.

Just did a Apple Hardware Test, and the fans go much louder when it is doing the Logic Board test.

It's slightly louder than my laptop (that is almost silent except for the sound of the HD spinning). I can't tell if the air from the mac is due to convection or a tiny fan, though.

One of my friends did say something about the powerbook using the air throughput from the HD cooling system to cool everything - perhaps the mini works in a similar way when it's in a passive state?

Mine's got a draft most of the time, so I assume that the fan is on constantly. Sometimes it revs up a bit when I'm doing something such as play games though (for obvious reasons).

mine has a draft out of the back but I didn't notice that it made any noise!

Same here - not silent but quiet and cool, at least compared to a pc. What noise there is comes from the fan, with the occasional 'crunch' from the HD.

Rob

The reviews said the mini was silent until the fan kicked in because that's exactly how they worked initially - but an OS update (10.3.8?) changed the fan behaviour to what you're seeing and hearing now. Mine also runs all the time, but it's not loud enough for it to bother me.

Paul

I thought mine had always spun slowly. Is that a definite that yours initially went off? If so is there something that can make it go back to that behaviour? My mini is only ticking over most of the time, if the fan does not have to be on it would be better mainly so it doesn't get full of dust.