Heatwave Triggers Mac mini Retirement!

[Snial]

Ironically, shortly before the 68KMLA launched the IKMLA forums, I ended up retiring my stalwart Mac mini late 2012 due to the UK heatwave at the end of June!

This Mac had been my primary Mac for most of 2014 to mid-2018. I'd upgraded it to 16GB; a 512GB SSD and it was happily running Catalina. Even after I'd bought my (much more powerful) i5 MacBook Pro (mid-2018), the mini was used most often; primarily because it needed less setting up: I just clicked the mouse and it'd be there. It was powered all the time (except for a few times the power got tripped). Even when I'd bought my MacBook Air M2 in early 2023 I used it most of the time, though in the past year or so, the MBA M2 was being used more often.

So, how did the UK heatwave (which reached a solid 37.7ºC, in Lincolnshire with high humidity) retire that Mac? It's actually quite simple. The Mac mini is in the office upstairs, which is south-facing. Like most Brits we don't have aircon, but we've been using passive techniques for cooling the house; like taking care over which windows or blinds get shut (or open) during the day and even covering the south-facing windows with white sheets and/or reflective silver sheets.

But it was still pretty unbearable for much of the day except in the living room. So, mid-way I just decided to power down the Mac mini, because I wasn't really able to spend much time there and even in sleep mode it would have been adding to the heat of the room a bit. So, I left it off for a day, then two and after a few days found I didn't really have a need to power it up and the MBA M2 took over. When things cooled down, I plonked my 4K monitor on the Mac mini, and that on a couple of books which means that I can see it easily on the M2's screen. So, it's now the main Mac. Given that we're now nearly 6 years into the transition, there's not much of a need for Intel apps.

So, that's it really. A few pangs of nostalgia for the event, and how, as I understand it, contentiousTermInSomePartsOfTheWorld can trigger sudden changes; in this case, the end of an era.

Well, nearly! It's now easier for me to get my 2008 MacBook C2D out and play with that than reconnect a display to the mini. And so in the spirit of the IKMLA forum's white MacBook challenge, I'm typing this post on mine!

And in case someone's thinking .oO(But 37.7ºC is fine in my home state), it's the combination of health, heat and humidity (the Wet Bulb temperature) that affects tolerability (and we have a few health problems, e.g. my diabetes type 2/gout issues). Check out the Wet Bulb Calculator:

Wet Bulb Calculator

With humidity and temperature you can find out the value of the wet-bulb temperature, and if it's any different from the normal air temperature.

www.omnicalculator.com

Which is based on this formula (it's based around ºC, sorry @MrFahrenheit ;-) ).



We're heading for another heatwave in Blighty, so typing this post at a mere sticky 27ºC is distinctly unpleasant and I'll be popping downstairs to a cool 25.5ºC once I've posted!

 

[adespoton]

Ironically, shortly before the 68KMLA launched the IKMLA forums, I ended up retiring my stalwart Mac mini late 2012 due to the UK heatwave at the end of June!

This Mac had been my primary Mac for most of 2014 to mid-2018. I'd upgraded it to 16GB; a 512GB SSD and it was happily running Catalina. Even after I'd bought my (much more powerful) i5 MacBook Pro (mid-2018), the mini was used most often; primarily because it needed less setting up: I just clicked the mouse and it'd be there. It was powered all the time (except for a few times the power got tripped). Even when I'd bought my MacBook Air M2 in early 2023 I used it most of the time, though in the past year or so, the MBA M2 was being used more often.

So, how did the UK heatwave (which reached a solid 37.7ºC, in Lincolnshire with high humidity) retire that Mac? It's actually quite simple. The Mac mini is in the office upstairs, which is south-facing. Like most Brits we don't have aircon, but we've been using passive techniques for cooling the house; like taking care over which windows or blinds get shut (or open) during the day and even covering the south-facing windows with white sheets and/or reflective silver sheets.

But it was still pretty unbearable for much of the day except in the living room. So, mid-way I just decided to power down the Mac mini, because I wasn't really able to spend much time there and even in sleep mode it would have been adding to the heat of the room a bit. So, I left it off for a day, then two and after a few days found I didn't really have a need to power it up and the MBA M2 took over. When things cooled down, I plonked my 4K monitor on the Mac mini, and that on a couple of books which means that I can see it easily on the M2's screen. So, it's now the main Mac. Given that we're now nearly 6 years into the transition, there's not much of a need for Intel apps.

So, that's it really. A few pangs of nostalgia for the event, and how, as I understand it, contentiousTermInSomePartsOfTheWorld can trigger sudden changes; in this case, the end of an era.

Well, nearly! It's now easier for me to get my 2008 MacBook C2D out and play with that than reconnect a display to the mini. And so in the spirit of the IKMLA forum's white MacBook challenge, I'm typing this post on mine!

And in case someone's thinking .oO(But 37.7ºC is fine in my home state), it's the combination of health, heat and humidity (the Wet Bulb temperature) that affects tolerability (and we have a few health problems, e.g. my diabetes type 2/gout issues). Check out the Wet Bulb Calculator:

Wet Bulb Calculator

With humidity and temperature you can find out the value of the wet-bulb temperature, and if it's any different from the normal air temperature.

www.omnicalculator.com

Which is based on this formula (it's based around ºC, sorry @MrFahrenheit ;-) ).

View attachment 101044

We're heading for another heatwave in Blighty, so typing this post at a mere sticky 27ºC is distinctly unpleasant and I'll be popping downstairs to a cool 25.5ºC once I've posted!

My G4 Minis are still running solid, but my C2D Mini died a few years back when the temperatures hit 40 in my area ("hot" here is anything above 26). That was my second C2D Mini to succumb to heat stroke. My only surviving Intel Mac is my 2008 MBP. My PPC ones are all doing just fine, TYVM

 

[CC_333]

It's not a Mac – although it is Intel-based – but I had a computer die on me recently.

As you all probably know by now, I like radio, and I have set up a small (and legal!) unlicensed AM (medium wave for those in the UK and Europe), and I decided to use a Dell OptiPlex for the task.

I started with a 390 (Sandy Bridge-based, so architecturally similar to @Snial 's '12 Mini) and then upgraded to a Skylake-based 7050 (not tons of Skylake-based Macs to compare to, maybe the 2016 MacBook Pro, an iMac or two, and were here any Skylake-based Minis?) When I upgraded my daily driver from Skylake to Coffee Lake last summer, the 7050 inherited the now-available i7-6700K. Remember this for later.

With that, it ran fine until about a week ago, when I began to notice some weird and random crashes that suggested a problem with the RAM.

I ran a check, and all was well (thank goodness! I didn't want to have to buy in this absurdly overpriced memory market), so i left it.

The crashes got worse, and then last Friday or Saturday, it got to the point where it was crashing within seconds of reaching the Windows desktop, and then, as I was attempting to reinstall Windows with the assumption that it was a software problem, the computer ceased to start up at all, and instead blinked a code at me, which I looked up in a table on Dell's support site.

The table indicated that the code – short-short-long – that the motherboard has failed. Great!

I promise, this will become relevant shortly!

I did some research, and it turns out the i7-6700K has a TDP of 91W, whereas the maximum this machine is rated for is 65W.

Oops.

I then checked the power supply, and it's rated for 180W. That's nothing!

So, given that it was hot in the house when this happened (about 85-90º inside), my prevailing theory is that the power supply simply got cooked and was putting out weak and erratic power, mimicking a motherboard failure.

So a 360W unit from a newer model is on order.

Does this seem reasonable?

c

 

[Snial]

My G4 Minis are still running solid, but my C2D Mini died a few years back when the temperatures hit 40 in my area ("hot" here is anything above 26). That was my second C2D Mini to succumb to heat stroke. My only surviving Intel Mac is my 2008 MBP. My PPC ones are all doing just fine, TYVM

For us, 26ºC is the boundary

<snip> had a computer die on me recently <snip> motherboard has failed <snip> i7-6700K has a TDP of 91W <snip> hot in the house when this happened (about 85-90º [29ºC.. 32ºC] inside), my prevailing theory is that the power supply simply got cooked <snip> Does this seem reasonable?

Thanks for the feedbacks. Let's assume for the moment I can stick within Da Rulez (or I'll have to moderate myself, which is kinda what I'm trying to do here), and it's important to talk about a hypothetical, nameless, phenomenon (HNP) which makes these kinds of incidents more likely in the future. Related incidents are ones where your house containing a great collection of Macs gets burned down while you're evacuating with an hour of notice; or where the wonderful museum you've spent years building up gets flooded.

The reality is that the HNP makes these kinds of incidents more likely, because (a) the operating margins get tighter over time due to HNP and (b) the equipment gets older over time also reducing the operating margins.

Therefore, from a preservation viewpoint, it's better to treat the HNP as being real, surely? It's not average conditions that are the issue (though (b) affects them too), but the extreme conditions. Understanding HNP's implications is just good engineering practice.

So, in @CC_333 's case, i7-6700 need a beefier power supply, and in @adespoton 's case, it seems like it's another power related issue: PPC Mac mini's have a wider margin (and I'm assuming his C2D mini was a white plastic one rather than a metal one which I guess acts as a better heatsink rather than an insulator, but I could be wrong). Sometimes though beefier power supplies won't work, for the same reason that ordinary fans can't cool a room and neither can fridges. In extreme HNP conditions the temperature difference between outside the case (i.e. the room) and inside the case won't be enough to wick away enough heat. Active cooling also has limited capability, because (a) you're using more energy for the active cooling and (b) you're just dumping the energy back in the room: so the room would need active cooling too.

One upshot is that low-power systems have better survivability over time, which hopefully applies to the relatively cool MBA M2 I'm currently using on my lap as temperatures creep into the 30ºC + range today (humidity 55%, so 24.6 WBT).