“Over the past few weeks, my Mac mini has been getting less and less responsive,” Erica Sadun blogs eponymously. “The kernel_task has been spinning up taking up ridiculous amounts of CPU time and dragging my system to its knees.”
“I did what anyone would: I ran hardware diagnostics (passed). I ran SMART diagnostics (passed) and then I web searched the hell out of the interwebs, and there I found an unusual suggestion,” Sadun writes. “Several sites suggested that I may have built up dust accumulation in my mini and that the fan control was trying to mitigate this.”
“Fortunately, I’m one of the lucky ones (for very low values of ‘lucky’) with a self-serviceable 2012 Mac mini instead of the upgrade a few years later that removed the service hatch,” Sadun writes. “I opened it up and sure enough it was pretty dirty in there. I vacuumed and then I used compressed air to finish… Plugged it back in and for nearly a week so far I have not had the same issues reoccur. It seems a tiny bit black magic but it also seems to be working (fingers crossed). I thought I’d write up a quick post to share my experience and see if anyone else has been through this and has advice or suggestions. For me, it’s like having my Mac back again.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: See that, vacuumming can be good for you (and your Mac)!
Now, do the floor while you’re at it. 😉