2018 Mac Mini - Does New Thermal Paste Make It Perform Faster?

The 3.2GHz i7 2018 Mac Mini is a powerhouse, outperforming most Macs on the market, but with temps reaching 100 degrees Celcius, it's definitely being throttled. Can new thermal paste increase performance? Let's find out!

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In this video, we stress test the 2018 Mac Mini using Cinebench R15 while using a variety of thermal pastes, including Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut and Arctic Silver MX-4. We were surprised to see some of the results!

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[rodrigo]

I think you guys done the test wrong, Apple priorities sound instead of performance so it runs at the same or almost the same temperature but the fan is running slower, I think you guys should tried to push the fan 100% with the stock paste and then test the 100% fan with a new paste and I can say that will be a lot better, I’ve done that with my iMac and if I didn’t turn up the fan it would get as hot as previous with the stock paste. I love your videos but pls try this!

[AlainHubert]

Going to all the trouble of replacing the thermal paste for such a marginal performance increase is not worth it. Thanks for demonstrating that.

[projectchannel]

Try to take off the bottom of the Mac mini and make a stand for it. I might not have seen a big difference in performance, but I got a huge difference in thermals and fan speed. The rubber lid on the bottom chokes the actual crap out of its single fan. There’s actually even a stand I’ve seen reviews on from a company called “speed” that also has an external fan on the bottom to push even more air into the small chassis. You should test that.

[JDW-]

@Max Yuryev You used a pea-sized drop of paste in your first attempt which got lower scores, but then you said you tried again using a different application method but sadly you did not show that application method. How did you apply the paste the second time? Did you cover the entire chip with paste instead of using a drop? That's what I tend to do and find that it works well (I've not tried it on a new Mac Mini though).

[urgx]

Would it be better to run the fan higher? It seems like it never kicks into full speed even under load.

[RadowitMarkowski]

is it not not better to get i5 which is working on cooler temperature for long term? As we know the heat has an impact for all components of the computer, and i5 and i7 have the same maximum TJ temperature 100 celcius

[Sonu]

you don’t get it..its the Apple BIOS it won’t ramp up the electricity unless the fan spins to more speed. Meaning kryonaut was running the chip cooler so lower fan speed Apple BIOS did not boost the chip because it thought fan has a problem. Apple BIOS is much different than traditional motherboard bios it just doesn’t work on temperature alone

Instead of Arctic paste I have put thermal pad IC cooling and it runs cooler but also pushes to the max. With stock Apple paste in load I was 99 C now its 95 C ..more than enough

[tilleyroadaffairproduction]

Do you have any suggestions to stop the Mac mini from getting hot? What makes the mac mini heat up? I have 2 monitors (one in HDMI port) the the other through a hub. I have a mac mini hub station under it with a ssd drive in it, a M-Audio Air 192-14 interface via usb-c in mac port. I have noticed lately, the Mac mini gets very hot on the surface and am a bit worried. I did upgrade the Ram from 8 to 32 Gb when I got it in 2019. It has the i7 6 core 12 thread with the max cpu. I am a music producer. Thanks for the video.

[gryphon]

So is there additional hardware they make for the cover that might allow it to pull on more air? The cover seems quite restrictive and I don’t see where it would pull
in sufficient air. What if you just ran it even with the cover off?

[MykiiLiu]

Arctic is a different company from Arctic Silver, as in Arctic MX-4 and Arctic Silver, right?

[taocry]

I replaced the Thermal Paste with liquid metal on my MacBook Pro. But the result is very similar. I doubt the liquid metal is good, but the fans are not strong enough to take off heat. It might be the same as new Mac mini.

[Dtne]

There is no need to replace any of the thermal paste. I have a 2012 late Mac mini i5, although its 2.3 ghz but it mostly runs between 2.9 and 3.1 ghz. Like all Mac minis the temps were staying above 85 Celsius for most parts. I just ordered a router platform with a 14cm fan, removed the base cover, put a piece of pantyhose to work as a filter. My mini is running at temperatures of 48 Celsius when browsing and jumped max to 92 Celsius when I ran Cinema Bench r15 stress test.

[Urosaurus]

Did you confound your methodology by using different monitors? Different setup different scores? Original display results?

[louislin]

Thanks! This video changes my mind on changing my thermal paste on mac mini (which is an i5 version), btw, if u can put something below the mac on the table, that may cool the machine down a little bit, cuz mac mini breathes in air from its bottom, free the space below can increase air flow i think. In my test, doing this may drop 5°C in normal usage

[potatopiko]

What about the graphite thermal processor pad. Would it make it worst?

[Billy_bSLAYER]

My 2018 Mac-Mini i5 Six-core scored 2145....not sure what is going on with the i7 there!

[ep]

I just don't bother with repasting, and leave the fan on maximum unless I am recording audio.. seems a small price to pay and I idle around 56C, full load rests around 65C in my audio stack. this is the hexacore 2020 i7, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD

[jcar]

And why don't they max out the ram higher than the multiple cores

[wifieye]

Arctic MX-4 is not manufactured by Arctic Silver Inc, which is located in central California. Arctic MX-4 is manufactured in China by Arctic (www.arctic.ac) or formerly Arctic Cooling. Arctic Silver Inc., (www.arcticsilver.com) is the manufacturer of Arctic Silver 5, Arctic Alumina and Ceramique 2 thermal compounds. Also, inn the first application way too much paste was used. Less is more!

[jcar]

I wish someone would find out why people don't go with all the cores numbers at the true speed of the CPU