M4 Pro Mac mini CPU very hot during gaming

My Mini M4 pro runs >200F when I render some HD movies and burn to disc. The fan speeds up from 1000rpm to 2800RPM but cannot hear the fan. The exterior case remains cool to luk warm. No issues in performance.

I too have encountered excessive temperatures and crashes on my new M4 Pro Mac mini. I previously had bought (and later returned) an M4 (not Pro) mini and did not encounter this problem. The M4 Pro is a more powerful, and hence hotter, chip than the M4. I believe the 'problem' in games at least is due to this feature:

Use Game Mode on Mac - Apple Support (CA)

Game Mode pushes your mini past it's normal limits when gaming to get better performance. However the M4 Pro Mac mini's cooling doesn't seem adequate to handle the increased thermal load from Game Mode. Some informal testing in Baldur's Gate 3 with Game Mode disabled showed that the CPU temps were in the mid 80s and GPU temps in the low 90s. (On the Celsius scale that is.) Not great, but not enough to cause crashing. I do need to do more testing, but wanted to share preliminary results.

The downside of course is lower frame rates. But BG3 isn't a shooter, so high frame rates aren't necessary, not for me anyway. The alternative is to use fan control software, which does seem to keep the device cool enough. The fan noise might bother some, but headphones are always an option.

The Apple Support article above has instructions on how to disable Game Mode if any of you wish to try.

They didn't even said that, they said unsupported game and gaming is not even the problem.

m4 just runs hot and it's Apple's fault.

In cases where I have heavy GPU usage but low CPU usage I've GPU cores sustain 100C+ temps, even saw one hit 106C, while the fans are reporting 58% speed. One fix is to use a fan controller to set a custom temperature threshold, I was able to sustain GPU core temps under 90C with fans reporting 67% speed this way.

It's almost as if Apple's built in fan profile is just based on the average of every sensor combined and not reactive to hot spots. My other sensors were averaging 40-50C while it was just the GPU cores that were out of control. IMO the fans should be ramping up if ANY sensor is going >100C.

The system can easily maintain acceptable temperature levels without jumping to 100% fan speed, it just chooses not to..

So what? What's your problem exactly? Did you buy the M4 to troll Apple or actually use the computer?

105 degrees Celsius isn’t acceptable no matter which silicone we’re talking about

Mine has been okay just using regular desktop apps so far. Did you check Activity Monitor for CPU usage by Spotlight? Another person mentioned Apple Intelligence indexes your data and could because your machine to run hot initially.

I totally agree that this is unacceptable, and it feels like a result of form over function. Apart from the fan management program you already have used, my only other solution would be to consider a Mac Mini M2 Pro instead.

Mine has only got hot(?) when I was doing some very intense video editing and the fan speed did increase to about 2800RPM but aside from that one time the unit remains cool and fan speed is about 1000RPM. I can manually increase the fan using my TGpro app which I did once as the fan did not increase automatically but not sure what the Apple strategy is for fan operation vs temp. so not sure I had to do that.

I would return for an exchange as my Mini M4 pro runs cool.

Apple Support is correct - the mini is not for gaming. Buy an Xbox, PS5 or fully loaded PC.

They don’t and aren’t required to either. Not everyone bought their minis from Toys”R”Us 😂 - they use it for real work, not amateur, self-taught thermal engineering. You should too. Goodbye 👋

Yesterday I bought an M4 Pro mini, but the mac mini is extremely hot even though it has not passed 24 hours and only browsers and whatsapp descop application are open. This was not the case with the old Mac mini m2. Such overheating both worried and surprised me.

I also have a Mac Mini Pro M4 and I have noticed the same thing. What is strange to me is when I ran cinebench 24 the fans kicked on automatically to cool it down but when I play a game like Path of Exile 2 the fans do NOT kick on and I need to turn them up manually to cool it down. The GPU clusters hit around 104C. I called Mac support and of course they blame it on an unsupported game 👎 Even though the computer SHOULD turn on the fans as needed no matter what “software” is being ran.