macaholic, i have a meromac mini question that perhaps you could answer?

I've noticed the temps on my T7200-upgraded mac mini are quite high. At idle it runs around the low 60s C and under full load each core sits around the high 80s to the low 90s C (according to TAT).

What temperatures are your merom mac minis running idle and load? How can I increase the fan speed?

On the side, I noticed that when it was stock with the Core Solo that under full load it would reach 73 C, so perhaps these temps are normal.

Thanks in advance!



EDIT: I found smcfancontrol and set the fan speed to maximum in OS X, then rebooted to Windows, so now I'm trying dual instances of FAH504-Console and the load temps have dropped to around 70 C.

Normal loads can go to 95C without throttle. The T7's run about 7 watts higher max than the T2's.

Yes. Those look normal to me. No problems with my very first Meromac mini that has been running folding 24/7 for 11 months thus far. I have not even bothered adjusting the fan settings either. Lazy me.

Ambient Air 51.0 C
CPU A Heatsink 68.0 C
CPU A Diode 87.0 C
CPU Core 1 89.0 C
CPU Core 2 87.0 C
NB Pos 1 54.0 C
NB Pos 2 55.0 C
SMART Disk 47.0 C

Cool and thanks for the help guys, I'll have to run it overnight and see how it does. It's been randomly rebooting on me when under full load, so I was thinking it was getting too hot. I suppose I'll see tomorrow.

If it's not the cpu then perhaps newegg sent me a bad stick of Buffalo ram. I can't get the mini to boot off of a bootable memtest86 CD, perhaps Apple won't allow that?

Lately I've been getting messages saying Virtual memory was low and Windows was automatically adjusting the size of the page file. Kind of weird to see that message with 2 gigs of RAM.

is your computer seeing all 2 gigs of ram?

Why not run the OSX SMP beta?

EmAn said:

is your computer seeing all 2 gigs of ram?

Click to expand...

Yeah, it sees all the RAM and runs about as fast as Windows can with 2 gigs, except when I got that page file message.

Shelnutt2 said:

Why not run the OSX SMP beta?

Click to expand...

I'd love to but this is a work machine and it has to run Windows. I tried vmware but I couldn't even get vmware to run. It kept giving me these random errors either saying that I didn't have a 64-bit processor or that VT was supported but not enabled. Weird.

The OS X side boots up and runs quick, much quicker then Windoze could ever hope to be, however I've had a couple of problems with OS X too. Once where it wouldn't wake up from sleep; and once when I tried to wake up the screen and the cursor was frozen with half the screen looking like blue TV snow, the other half showing the desktop still.

OSX SMP

That's what I'm running at home, getting about 1000ppd or so. 1 gig of mem.

benbaked said:

I'd love to but this is a work machine and it has to run Windows. I tried vmware but I couldn't even get vmware to run. It kept giving me these random errors either saying that I didn't have a 64-bit processor or that VT was supported but not enabled. Weird.

Click to expand...

Be sure you are using the latest version of Boot Camp AND have applied all the latest firmware updates.

Macaholic said:

Be sure you are using the latest version of Boot Camp AND have applied all the latest firmware updates.

Click to expand...

Hi Mac, well I downloaded the latest version of Bootcamp as you suggested and made a new drivers CD...then reinstalled Windows XP (wiped OS X completely off and gave Windows the entire 60 gig drive for its partition). After the install completed I noticed there are no more yellow bangs in device manager, good thing! Also, TAT reported WinSMP full load temps in the steady low 80s, reported temps about ten degrees lower then what they had been before the OS reinstall. So far so good.

But the problem I've been having since day one of upgrading this mini has been spontaneous rebooting. I thought that this was caused by what I thought were high CPU temps, but that is not the case. Even if I set XP to not automatically restart after a failure it still reboots, so I never have a BSOD to refer to, and the Event Log never mentions that an error occurred. Of course the reboots never happen when I am physically in front of the machine.

I was searching google and found a number of people with the same issue after they upgraded their minis to 2 GB of RAM. In the thread starter's case the issue ended up being related to bad RAM. He said that it would run stable for hours on end with either slot populated with a 1 GB stick of RAM, but not both slots occupied simultaneously. After alot of testing and narrowing down components he finally RMA'd the RAM and with both sticks of his replacement RAM installed simultaneously he hasn't had a spontaneous reboot since.

Another poster said that his spontaneous reboots went away after he pressed the SMC reset button on the mini's logic board. I never reset the SMC when I upgraded this mini....so a short while ago I took the mini apart and pressed the SMC reset button. If that's not the resolution then my next step will be to remove the 2 gigs of Buffalo RAM and replace it with the single 512mb stock module.

I'm hoping to have this issue ironed out before the chimp challenge starts. I've got it setup so even if it reboots it will automatically log on to Windows and start the WinSMP service...but it'd be nice to not have to worry about it rebooting on me.

Okay, it ran fine for almost two days with no reboots...so twenty minutes ago I put the top housing back on...and it just now spontaneously rebooted.