I purchased a new i7 mini in late January, by mid-February it was spontaneously rebooting every 3-4 days. Some kind of panic in the BridgeOS on the T2 chip. After a frustrating 7+ days going round and round with support, they replaced the motherboard and I rebuilt the system on Mojave from scratch (manually pulling files from various backups, not using Time Machine directly). My Catalina experience was so bad I wasn't about to move my daily work to it.
I'm still (~once a month) getting random reboots (each with different crash reports). I'm saving the core dumps but haven't decided if I'm going to deal with the long process of trying to get Apple to do something about it (I probably will eventually). I NEVER buy a Mac without AppleCare, so I will definitely decide before that period is up.
I'm using an app called
Macs Fan Control to spin the fan faster when it detects a relatively high core temp - faster than their built-in algorithms do (I bought the Pro version, so the current rule is the fan starts spinning faster at 60°C to a max of 80°C). I watched the app's window quite a bit at first, and it does kick in. PyCharm tends to periodically run one core up pretty high for some reason (which is something I've noticed many times in the past) and when it does the fan definitely picks up speed.
<rant>I'm about 50% convinced it's a heat issue (and I may try turning it on it's side), but there are other things that seem to indicate otherwise:
- On a reboot it often forgets monitor arrangement (I have 3 24" monitors)
- On reboot, many apps launch on different monitors than they did before the reboot (probably related to the above)
- USB is super finicky - for instance, I have a USB hub that has to be plugged into one of the USB ports (not a thunderbolt port).
- Also, after a reboot, I have to unplug/replug said hub before the keyboard and mouse that's plugged into it works.
- I have a Logitech G635 headset that will only work if it's plugged directly into the 1st USB port.
All in all, this mini is the most problematic Mac I've had in many MANY years. Combine that with poor macOS quality, and my computing experience is really starting to drag on me...</rant>