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Tuesday, April 9, 2024

mac mini – Thunderbolt monitor screen going dark


I am running a 2018 Mac Mini with a 27″ Thunderbolt display as the main and a 27″ Benq as a 2nd (extended) display. I’m using an Apple TB3 to TB2 adaptor for the Thunderbolt and connecting to the Benq via HDMI. MacOS v14.4.1.

Just for the past couple evenings the Thunderbolt display has been working fine all day but during sessions usually right before bed it has been going dark out of nowhere. I don’t think it’s actually dropping the connection because the dock, menubar and desktop icons are not moving over to the Benq like they do if I were to disconnect the cable from the back of the Mac, but it’s definitely all black and the only thing that bings it back is a restart or disconnecting and reconnecting the cable from the adaptor or back of the Mac. And even after that, in most cases it has stayed on for a minute or 2 and then goes black again.

Mac Fan Control isn’t indicating that any internal temps are too high, but the box HAS felt rather hot. I currently have the fan running at full speed constantly and it hasn’t gone dark since I made that change (about the past 20 minutes… whereas it was going dark consistently for the 30 minutes before that). Is this a coincidence or does it make sense that the picture would go out if something (video card) got too hot? And in the case of the latter, is this an issue with my Mac’s temperature sensing capabilities?

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