2012 Mac Mini - Surgery Time!

[A4orce84]

Hello Everyone,

A friend sold me his 2012 Mac Mini (i5 with 16GB of Memory) last month, and I have slowly been collecting parts to upgrade the machine and finally planning for the big surgery this weekend:

Items planned in the surgery:
1. SSD upgrade for the 'main' drive (500GB Samsung).
2. Dual Drive Kit + SSD Upgrade (1TB Crucial).
3. OWC Bluetooth Module Shielding Kit (Big Tan Tape Thing).
4. Install latest MacOS Mojave + All Apps.

The Dual Drive Kit alone looks pretty intense, basically taking apart the entire mac mini to complete the installation. But I am looking forward to giving it the ol' college try and see if I am successful or not! I'll be sure to take some additional pictures of the progress I make and hopefully the new and improved mac mini!

Wish me luck! =)

Thanks,
Asif

 

[MacManiac76]

Shouldn't be too difficult as long as you keep track of how things go together and don't lose any screws. iFixIt has a good guide to follow step-by-step if you are worried about forgetting the order of things when putting it all back together.

 

[jtara]

Easy-peasy. Been there done that.

Go slowly pulling the board. You NEED the tool they provided. It is VERY tight - really well done RF shielding, the fingers really grab.

Consider ditching the original hard drive. If it isn't dying already, it will be. You will have fewer thermal problems without it.

I have a 2012 i7 which came with a Fusion Drive. That's actually a hard drive a a small flash drive. I don't remember if I used a data doubler or just the original mounting. I left the original hard drive as a backup drive, and put the system and data on a 1TB OCZ Vector 180.

While the original hard drive is usable, it it close to the maximum bad sectors. I don't use it, not even for backup. One of these days I will go in and remove it.

One 2012 Mini tip - try not to stress the mini-DP socket. Don't put a heavy dongle (or ANY dongle) on it. Try not to put it in a situation where the cable "wiggles" for any reason. You will eventually have trouble. And I mean you will eventually have trouble, no matter how hard you try not to.

While you are there, vacuum the dirt. And would not be a bad idea to get some good thermal paste and re-do the CPU heatsink.

 

[bigfatipod]

What is the Bluetooth shielding kit for?

I upgraded the fusion drive to (two) “real” SSDs a few months ago. I was hitting errors on the original drive, as a previous poster warned about.

The SSDs have made the machine phenomenal. I go back and forth about upgrading to a 2018 and think I may stick with the 2012 until it kicks the bucket.

 

[jtara]

I go back and forth about upgrading to a 2018 and think I may stick with the 2012 until it kicks the bucket

The 2018 will give you another quantum leap in the filesystem performance. The 2012 is hampered by having to use a SATA drive.

Blackmagic gives my 2012 Mini 450 write/480 read. Certainly not shabby compared to the original Fusion drive (my model) or pokey hard drive (lower models).

But my new iMac Pro gets 3000 write/2500 read. Current Macbook Pros will also come close to this.

The 2018 Mini with SSD should get similar results.

After considering the 2018 Mini, I went for the iMac Pro for greater memory capacity (I loaded it with 64GB) and a great Retina display. It wasn't that much more than a maxed-out 2018 Mini.

I still use the Mini. It's tucked behind the iMac Pro. It now runs a 24" Asus 1080p monitor, and I use it for email, web browsing, viewing documentation (developer) etc. I use Barrier to share keyboard/mouse. The iMac Pro has the Samsung 34" curved ultra-wide that I used to have on the Mini along with the 1080p. The Mini was starting to balk frequently at the two monitors. It could only run the ultra-wide at 30Hz.

The Mini was getting sketch to rely on for work. The non-Retina monitors are starting to hurt my eyes. ;( At least now I run the ultra-wide at 60Hz and the 1080p at 100Hz.