Chosen Solution
Hi there, Hope you are fine. Please, check this video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VAdzQVJH6… I want to setup my Mac Mini in vertical position. There are three options: (1) wires at the left and Apple logo turned 90 degrees to the left, (2) wires at the top and logo in standard position and (3) wires at the right and logo 90 degrees to the right. For positions (2) and (3) everything works fine. However, when using position (1) I started to hear a metallic weird noise. My first thought was it is the fan but to my surprise it was not: removed the fan and still the noise, I figured out it is the heatsink: if I remove it, there is no noise. The heatsink itself looks to me as a really solid and compact piece, I don’t see where the noise could be coming from. I cleaned and removed everything that can be cleaned and removed, but still getting the noise. Any thoughts or help? I can quickly share a video if needed. Thank you very much for your help. I am going nuts.
Is your Mac mini one with an HDD or a Fusion style drive? I am wondering if the vibration is the heat sink vibrating because of the hard drive, since there wouldn’t be any other moving components in the device without the fan. The heat sink should be mounted quite solidly to the board both by the screws around the CPU and another screw at the end of the heat sink. I would see about running it with the bottom panel off just to see if you can isolate where exactly the noise is coming from. Make sure screws are tightened appropriately since a loose screw could be allowing wiggle room for the heat sink. Alternatively, you could nix the hard drive, if that’s what is causing the underlying vibration and replace it with an SSD instead.
