mojaveloopter

Very interesting.  Glad you guys tried this and not me so thanks for that.  Personally I think that Apple probably has done its homework on the best cooling solution but having said that it probably is a compromise that works for most customers as well as improves reliability and reduces warranty repairs.   

On all of my Apple machines I use fan control software to control my fan speeds.   This works tremendously well and keeps my temperatures down with really very minimal increase in fan noise.  Plus when not needed I can just let it go back to the Apple defaults.  Not sure if this will work on the new hardware for the mac mini but might be something you all can test.  

The only downside to using the fan control software that I can think of is that it might reduce the lifetime of the fans but I have machines that go back to 2012 and their fans are still working fine.