> My Mac mini keeps running hot!
when using my mac mini 2014, its fans spin up and it feels hot. activity monitor shows kernel_task is taking 100 per cent of the cpu. how can i kill that and let my mac cool down?
Although this is counter–intuitive, these are symptoms of a single underlying problem, and not its cause. When your Mac’s processor is heavily loaded with an intensive task, it generates more heat, which is managed by the Mac’s cooling system.
That includes both raising fan speeds, and reducing the work being done by the processor. The way that it achieves the latter, when it can’t reduce the processor’s clock speed, is to lock your intensive task out using the kernel, which shows up in Activity Monitor as kernel_task. So kernel_task is actually your friend, as it’s trying to reduce the amount of heat your Mac’s processor is generating to let the computer cool down.
There are three things to do: ensure your Mac mini is in the coolest place possible and out of direct sunlight; check that its fan and cooling vent are clean and unobstructed; and if those still don’t help, try resetting the SMC (bit.ly/mfrstsmc), which controls cooling.
If the problem persists even when you next restart the Mac, or occurs when your computer should still be cool, run Apple’s hardware diagnostics (bit.ly/mfapdg) in case one of the temperature sensors is giving a spurious reading. Tools like iStat Menus (14–day trial, bjango.com) let you monitor temperatures and fans — but you should resist the temptation to fiddle with kernel_task, because it’s on your side.