Older Mac Minis can make good spare machines to be used as server or cloud hardware because they are cheap and the hardware is not that bad from the point of view of quality. One problem with the Apple Mac Mini though is that for warm countries the cooling is not that great with the Mac Mini aluminum body feeling very hot to the touch even if the fan is working properly.

In case the Mac Mini has been converted to use an SSD /NVME instead of a spinning hard-drive then its position seems irrelevant and, similar to the HDD Axagon enclosure, making the Mac stand vertically seems much more efficient in terms of cooling given that the heat will be allowed to circulate all the way around the casing.

The following presents a mounting solution, along with an improvised fan solution that has dropped the overall temperature as reported by the Apple SMC by about 10 degrees Celsius.

Fortunately the Mac has a very straight-forward geometric shape such that it is possible to create your own stand for the Mac. In the end, you'd just need two small vertical planks to hold the Mac Mini in-between and one flat bottom plank to act as the base. However, there exist mounts for the Mac Mini that are very cheap relative to their usefulness.

The Mac Mini is then fit upright within the two blades that are then adjusted and brought together to hold onto the Mac. The quality of the same sort-of design varies with the price, some of these stands actually having internal springs for the two blades such that the blades do not have to be adjusted manually using a screwdriver. The ones we got were made out of plastic but of course you can find the exact same design made out of metal or wood but ultimately for this mod it does not matter much.

For this project an "Artctic" fan rated at was salvaged from the affordable rack tray project and then cleaned thoroughly. This is one nice large fat fan with large blades that can cover a 1U rack surface with just four of them and the quality is not entirely no-brand. The cool part is that the fan seems to be about the size of the stand which is great because we'd like to mount this fan onto the stand somehow, ideally such that it can blow right into the bottom escape hatch of the Mac Mini.

In order to mount the fan, PCB spacers will be used and the spacers will be mounted onto the stand with the fan then lastly being mounted onto the spacers. Make no mistake, the stand is good but cheap such that the vertical upright blades are not made out of solid plastic such that a hole could just be threaded into the plastic but rather the blades are empty inside and hole mounts have to fastened inside the plastic to hold the screws that will make up the assembly.

The insets are truly magical, can be used for any material and provide plenty of grip for screws to hold together even a tough assembly. In this case, because the plastic is empty, some BISON two-part epoxy glue was used to secure the inset in place and make sure that it will not move. The torque strength here is not much at all but mainly just supportive because it must hold the fan upright.

Just to be sure, the two wires consisting in the positive and ground are isolated through some trial and error in order to test the fan by making it spin. After that, a standard socket for a power jack is mounted onto the chassis of the fan with the two wires connected.

The fan seems to work great and the PCB spacers hold up the fan by just two holes. Note that after using the epoxy glue to make sure that the insets do not move, the whole build as postponed for about 8 hours to make sure that the BISON epoxy glue sets. The result is a very nicely cemented hole around the inset that will not break easily at all.

Mounting the socket was given some deliberation with various schemes popping up such as creating some sort of breadboard assembly and mounting that onto the fan itself by drilling another hole into the fan chassis but it just seemed way too complicated for what must be accomplished such that using some very hot melt glue and mounting the socket right onto the chassis seemed like the best option. Again, there should be little tensile strength here; in fact, there should be no force at all exerted onto the jack so going out of your way to secure the socket better is mostly a waste of time.

The mold trick using painter's tape is used to create a longer body for the power socket by creating a mold using painter's tape and then pouring hot melt glue inside. The image shows two stands and a splitter that was just made to power two fans at the same time. Each fan is rated at which is very low in terms of power, more than likely because the very large fan blades compensate by moving more air.

Finally, the Mac Mini has its bottom cover removed and is set into the assembly with the fan blowing into the Mac Mini right on top of the built-in fan next to the RAM sticks.

The built-in Mac Mini fan has the property of pulling air through the chassis from the bottom and then pushing that air out the back of the Mac Mini. The problem is that the bottom cover does not have any opening for any air intake and instead it is just there to provide some "pressure" to counter the build-in fan. However, the pressure can be replaced with the fan assembly just made with the extra bonus that the very large fan also blows air onto the RAM chips.

Measurements along the lines of before-and after indicated a drop from at standby to about , which overall is a very large drop in temperature. However, the problem is so bad that just holding your hand over the aluminum body and noticing that it is much cooler seems just sufficient.

Perhaps this is one project to add to the reel of environmentalism given that without this Mac Mini modification and the Axagon enclosure modification it is sure that we might not have survived this summer.