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2012 Mac Mini fan

Yesterday my 2012 Mac mini slowed to a crawl and I realised it was overheating. 


I installed Macs Fan Control and it became apparent that the fan wasn’t working. 


I reset the SMC (or at least I believe I did - there is no way of knowing for sure, right?) but that didn’t make any difference.


I swapped the fan in my machine with one that’s known to work from another machine. That wouldn’t work in my machine either.


I want to get the fan working again. Does anyone have any suggestions please? 


Thanks in advance



Mitch

Mac mini, macOS 10.14

Posted on Sep 8, 2021 11:16 PM

Reply
8 replies

Sep 8, 2021 11:52 PM in response to Miltomatic

In addition to the above:


I have now uninstalled Macs Fan Control and installed a paid for version of TG Pro. It reports that the fan might be broken or unplugged. It is not unplugged.


I have tried rebooting to Diagnostics mode but I get the "Cannot Load EFI/Drivers" error message


I am investigating the purchase of this:


https://www.speed-designs.com/mac-upgrades


Any further advice or suggestions would be welcome.


Mitch

Sep 16, 2021 11:03 PM in response to den.thed

Hi den.thed

Thanks very much for taking the time to reply. Apologies for taking so long to acknowledge your suggestion.

I have tried running Apple Hardware test but irrespective of whether I reboot holding D or option-D I get an error message saying "Cannot load EFI/Drivers/TestSupport.efi"


At the moment I'm keeping my Mac cool using a room fan - a solution which works but is a little noisy. I have ordered a Speed-Design cooler but I am waiting for it to arrive.


My plan is to migrate everything important to a spare machine and to re-install the original operating system (if I can) and see if that makes a difference to my ability to run AHT. I'd be grateful of any opinions on that plan.


Thanks also for your suggestion to move to a newer Mac. It may well come to that but I would like to persevere with my 2012 for a little while longer if I can.


Thanks again


Mitch

Sep 29, 2021 9:27 PM in response to den.thed

My Speed-Design external cooler arrived yesterday and, so far I'm very impressed. Before it's arrival I was keeping my Mac cool by standing in on it's edge with it's base plate removed and directing a room fan into it. That kept it cool - just. The Speed Design device keeps the temperature much lower, and, while it's significantly noisier than the internal fan (when it worked) it is much less noisy than my cobbled together temporary solution.


Long term I suspect it might be time to replace the Mac.


Thanks for your earlier help & advice.



2012 Mac Mini fan

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