Complete Dead - How To Check Power Supply Vs Logic Board

Well, the ifixit guide to replacing the power supply was SO helpful to taking this apart. Literally had to completely disassemble the Mac mini to get to the power supply to check it. The guide said 45 minutes but being uber careful and taking extra notes for reassembly took twice as long.

I checked that I was getting 120v at the end of the power cord where it goes into the power supple. Using the image above I checked the left most pin and the rightmost pin and read a steady 11.8v across. So the power supply would appear not to be the issue. And I've read other posts on ifixit for similar dead Mac minis where they just replaced the power supply and still had a dead Mac.

Looking at ifixit Mac mini A1347 (Late 2012) 2.5 GHz Logic Board the cost of a replacement logic board is $300. And that's a used one. Plus mine has just 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive that has been spinning for 6 years. It doesn't seem a cost effective solution.

Apple's refurbed store has Mac mini late 2014 version with "Haswell" Core i5 2.6 GHz, Intel Iris 5100 graphics 8GB RAM and 1TB hard drive for $590.

The dead one is prior gen late 2012 "Ivy Bridge" Core i5 2.5GHz, Intel HD 4000 graphics 4GB RAM and 500GB hard drive that had already been spinning 6 years.

The dead one was about out of hard drive space and can't remember if I had it on High Sierra or Mojave but it was getting pokey particularly on startup. I'd been considering doubling its RAM to 8GB and it's hard drive to 1TB so by the time I'd do that on top of the $300 logic board it seems a better deal to just spend the $590 on the new one and get a little better processor and graphics along with the 8GB RAM and 1TB of storage I was already thinking about.

Hello!

I had exactly the same issue than Mopac.

This happened last month (on 5th April 2023 to be exact):

my Mac Mini late 2012

(CPU: Intel Core i7 2.6 GHz | RAM: 16 GB | SSD 256 GB + HDD 2 TB)

was perfectly OK before I went to a concert,

but was completely dead when I came back at night. Bad night!

~ KENDALPH – (2023-05-24 Wednesday 16:35 GMT+2) ~

After that, I thought similarly to Mopac:

as a replacement, I bought a refurbished Mac Mini late 2019

(CPU: Intel Core i7 3 GHz | RAM: 16 GB | SSD×2 = 1 TB + 4 TB).

I thought this would be a nice upgrade. But in fact it's not,

because I overlooked the important fact that

the Mac Mini 2019 CPU is only Dual Core

instead of the Quad Core in the (despite older) Mac Mini 2012.

For basic usage, this doesn't make much difference,

but for more intensive usage (like music apps in my case),

this makes a big change.

In practice, despite being newer, having a faster CPU,

and having a second SSD instead of a HDD,

this particular Mac Mini 2019 is unable to run the DAW projects

that were running perfectly well (or just below the limit) on my Mac Mini 2012.

~ KENDALPH – (2023-05-24 Wednesday 16:35 GMT+2) ~

That why I ordered a replacement motherboard (used, of course),

plus 2 SSD of 4 TB each (Crucial), and I hope that will do the trick.

I also own a Mac Mini late 2018, but at the present

I haven't found a way to force it to accept Mac OS 10.11 (El Capitan),

which I still need to run my old 32 Bits software.

Of course, I could upgrade it to Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave)

and be able to run this OS it on the Mac Mini 2018,

but since there are other apps that I like

and that are not compatible with this newer OS,

I prefer to stick to Mac OS 10.11.

~ KENDALPH – (2023-05-24 Wednesday 16:35 GMT+2) ~