My issues with my Mac continue. When I first connected it to my new 24″ in monitor, I was getting random graphical errors that would totally lock the computer up. This would force me to do a hard reboot. I did some reading, and I narrowed down the issue to the following causes: overheating, 24″ is too big for its internal graphics card, bad RAM, and the main logic board.
Setting off in my quest to narrow down the cause, I did lot of reading on a lot of Apple forum boards. My first suspect, overheating, was slightly confirmed. The Mac will of course run hotter if you’re asking it to push a bigger display, but everyone said the mini’s internal cooling system should handle it no problem. In fact, I read lots of testimonials of people running a Mac Mini on a 24″ display without problems. Just as a precaution though, I turned my mini on it’s side for better airflow to its intake vents on the bottom.
In reading about overheating issues, this also brought confirmation that the graphics card should have nothing to do with it. Being somewhat of a skeptic still, I turned my screen saver off and set my power setting to kill the display after 5 minutes. Since I have witnessed my Mac already locked up on the screen saver on more than one occasion, I felt this would be prudent. These two semi-solutions seemed to work well, and the Mac would only be an issue if I was working on it constantly for more than 5 hours without giving it a break.
I really didn’t even bother with the bad RAM issue since I had just replaced my RAM again. I replaced the stock 1GB with 2GB shortly after I got the machine, but several months later that RAM went bad. It wasn’t until last month that I finally purchased new RAM and took it back to 2GB. I have a hard time believing that 2 new sets of RAM can go back on me in the same machine in under a year’s time.
Everything ran just fine until 2 days ago, when I started getting random reboots. The last happening last night. Up investigating this, I did find that my external 320GB drive I have hooked up to the Mac seemed to be not getting any power. I fiddled with the cable and it came back on. It was a few minutes after this the drive disappeared again and the Mac rebooted on its own. Power fluctuations like this could certainly cause a random reboot. I have to work on it this weekend and see if I can figure out why the drive is loosing power. However, if I cannot narrow down the issue, my only culprit left is the logic board. I’ve actually discussed this with my wife, and she was the first one to say it wasn’t worth replacing and that we should just get another machine. I would love to get a Mac Pro, but don’t have any where near the bank needed for such a purchase. A Macbook would be sweet, but for what I do I would want to go a Macbook Pro. Again, no bank for that at the moment. So, the logical choice would be another Mini. I would have absolutely no problem with that. However, the rumor mill has been a buzz about a new Mac Mini coming out this year with a better processor, 2GB stock RAM, and a new nVIDIA graphics card. I can most certainly wait for that.
So in the meantime, I sat down at my PC last night and started cleaning it out, prepping it to take over day-to-day duties. While I am not giving up on my Mac, I have to be realistic and come to terms that it may not be stable enough in its current condition as an everyday work machine. Once I get the PC setup, it’ll be time to really delve in and find what the problem is.
