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Mac Mini Purchased!

Picked up my new one today (although the retailer, a big department store couldn't find the box for ages), and it's working a treat... :D

Unlike my old one, the new one has decent wireless range (I think I buggered the wireless of my old one during an almost-horrendously-botched DIY RAM upgrade), it seems plenty fast enough and it's nice to have a fairly empty hard drive rather than an almost full one.
 
DHart said:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145228

I installed it in an external enclosure first, formatted it, then installed OS-X on it, then installed it in the Mini. Then the external enclosure makes a nice mobile pocket-sized home for the 120GB drive you remove from the mini.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MSTG800U2K/
Click to expand...

Will this one do the same job:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=370172071700
 
TechViking said:
Mine just arrived. Need to go out and buy a putty knife and get to work. :)
Click to expand...

Mine's still out for delivery. :( The RAM's arrived and I have the hard drive ready. Just need the mini now. It looks like the wireless keyboard I ordered won't be getting here today either but that's no biggy.
 
Woo! Mine just arrived!

For anyone who might be placing a similar order in the UK, here's how long things took:

I ordered a bog standard stock base mac mini with nothing else on the order, no printer, no extra software, no ram, nothing.

Ordered at about 9:30pm on Wednesday 11th March 2009.
Changed to "Prepared for Shipment" at about 4am on Thursday 12th March 2009 with "Delivers: 12 Mar, 2009 - 16 Mar, 2009"
Changed to "Shipped" at about 11pm on Thursday 12th March 2009.
Changed to "Out for Delivery" at about 6:30am on Friday 13th March 2009.
Delivered at abut 2:30pm on Friday 13th March 2009.

:D
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
Woo! Mine just arrived!

For anyone who might be placing a similar order in the UK, here's how long things took:

I ordered a bog standard stock base mac mini with nothing else on the order, no printer, no extra software, no ram, nothing.

Ordered at about 9:30pm on Wednesday 11th March 2009.
Changed to "Prepared for Shipment" at about 4am on Thursday 12th March 2009 with "Delivers: 12 Mar, 2009 - 16 Mar, 2009"
Changed to "Shipped" at about 11pm on Thursday 12th March 2009.
Changed to "Out for Delivery" at about 6:30am on Friday 13th March 2009.
Delivered at abut 2:30pm on Friday 13th March 2009.

:D
Click to expand...
Congrats , hope you have fun setting it up....waiting on Apple calling me back for something then mine should be shipping
 
beatmonkeytwo said:
Well done spanky. Let us know how the upgrades go :D
Click to expand...

Upgrades are in. Word of warning for anyone doing your own upgrade, the temperature sensor cable is very fragile, try to avoid removing it from the mac mini if possible - i.e. pry the sticky sensor off the edge of the hard drive and deroute the cable rather than doing what iFixit says and removing the cable.

I'm waiting for it to install Leopard now. I was hoping to just let it boot off the drive with Leopard on that came out of my old mini but it seems like the 10.5.6 version the Mac Minis ship with is slightly different to the version that's available via Software Update. It booted up but the boot up displayed loads of diagnostic info, 'verbose startup' as it was called back in the Hackintosh days. Shouldn't take too long for it to install everything I want. :)
 
blimey you don't hang around spanky! :eek: Thanks for the tip. How long did it take you to install the ram and drive?

Does anyone know yet if there is a video on the web with the new mac mini disassembly with installing upgrades?
 
SATA bus

Can anyone confirm that the SATA bus speed is now 3Gbit/s ?

Thanks.
 
beatmonkeytwo said:
blimey you don't hang around spanky! :eek: Thanks for the tip. How long did it take you to install the ram and drive?

Does anyone know yet if there is a video on the web with the new mac mini disassembly with installing upgrades?
Click to expand...

It took me about half an hour I guess, something like that. It can probably be done in under ten minutes though if you rush.
 
I plan on installing a 7200 500GB drive, would the mini be able to "handle" such a drive? Also, whats the procedure after its installed, just stick the DVD in and install OS no problems?
 
lamerica80 said:
I plan on installing a 7200 500GB drive, would the mini be able to "handle" such a drive? Also, whats the procedure after its installed, just stick the DVD in and install OS no problems?
Click to expand...

You'll have a job - no one makes 500GB 7200rpm drives in a 2.5" form factor which is available to buy now that I'm aware of.

500GB 5400rpm and 320GB 7200rpm are the largest capacity options. I'm seriously looking at the Hitachi 5K500B.
 
There's none in the UK, and US retailers are not likely to be on my radar.

Best I've seen here was a pre-order for dispatch in two weeks time from a retailer that I frankly don't trust.
 
Funny I don't see anyone talking about FW800 external cases. I'll probably up the RAM to 4GB, but might keep the internal drive and spend the extra on a big external. Is FW fast enough that it will be about as fast as the internal SATA?

Any ideas on a good external drive case?

BTW, for me, buying one drive means buying two as I plan to have a backup.
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
Upgrades are in. Word of warning for anyone doing your own upgrade, the temperature sensor cable is very fragile, try to avoid removing it from the mac mini if possible - i.e. pry the sticky sensor off the edge of the hard drive and deroute the cable rather than doing what iFixit says and removing the cable.
Click to expand...

No truer words have been spoken! I did a HD upgrade last night and booted it up. Fan was going full blast! I thought it was the optical drive as I was installing Leopard but it wasn't. I had managed to mess up the sensor cable by pulling one of the leads partially out of the clip. Luckily I managed to push it back in and reconnect and all seems fine now!
 
Great machine, but its not silent

Hi everyone, I bought the base 2.0Ghz model and got around to adding 4GB's of RAM and a 320GB Scorpio Black HDD today, and so far the machine is really flying!

One thing thou, the machine (also before I upgraded the RAM and HDD) is not as silent as I had hoped. I tried to install SMCFanControl to see how fast the fan is spinning, and its spinning at 1500 RPM.

I really hate when I can hear computers, since I would prefer they were silent (who would not I guess). But how are your units, when you sit 2-3 feet away, can you hear the fan humming, or is it totally silent?

I had the previous 2.0Ghz model a while back, and dont remember it beeing this "noisy" (I put noisy in quotes, because its not bad, but it is noticable)

Share your experiences :)

EDIT: Added info about previous machine
 
MagicBoy said:
No worky :(
Click to expand...

Try this link.

Mascat said:
No truer words have been spoken! I did a HD upgrade last night and booted it up. Fan was going full blast! I thought it was the optical drive as I was installing Leopard but it wasn't. I had managed to mess up the sensor cable by pulling one of the leads partially out of the clip. Luckily I managed to push it back in and reconnect and all seems fine now!
Click to expand...

Yeah I managed to pull both cables out. I was trying to remove the socket with a screwdriver and buggered it up. Never mind, they went back in easy enough. :)

theodk said:
Hi everyone, I bought the base 2.0Ghz model and got around to adding 4GB's of RAM and a 320GB Scorpio Black HDD today, and so far the machine is really flying!

One thing thou, the machine (also before I upgraded the RAM and HDD) is not as silent as I had hoped. I tried to install SMCFanControl to see how fast the fan is spinning, and its spinning at 1500 RPM.

I really hate when I can hear computers, since I would prefer they were silent (who would not I guess). But how are your units, when you sit 2-3 feet away, can you hear the fan humming, or is it totally silent?

I had the previous 2.0Ghz model a while back, and dont remember it beeing this "noisy" (I put noisy in quotes, because its not bad, but it is noticable)

Share your experiences :)

EDIT: Added info about previous machine
Click to expand...

It is maybe a teeny bit louder that the last mac mini but that might have been the superdrive. I haven't noticed it as being 'noisy' at all. Unless you bugger up the hard drive temperature sensor cable of course!! :p
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
It is maybe a teeny bit louder that the last mac mini but that might have been the superdrive. I haven't noticed it as being 'noisy' at all. Unless you bugger up the hard drive temperature sensor cable of course!! :p
Click to expand...

The noise level is the same before and after switching the internals of the machine. Its not noisy as in a car banging into a wall. The sound I am hearing is the internal fan spinning, which I just dont remember hearing as much on the old mini.

Can you hear your fan when there are no other sounds in the room, and you are standing/sitting 2-3 feet away?

And I'm not thinking of when the Superdrive is used, which ofcourse produces quite alot of noise :)
 
theodk said:
Hi everyone, I bought the base 2.0Ghz model and got around to adding 4GB's of RAM and a 320GB Scorpio Black HDD today, and so far the machine is really flying!

One thing thou, the machine (also before I upgraded the RAM and HDD) is not as silent as I had hoped. I tried to install SMCFanControl to see how fast the fan is spinning, and its spinning at 1500 RPM.

I really hate when I can hear computers, since I would prefer they were silent (who would not I guess). But how are your units, when you sit 2-3 feet away, can you hear the fan humming, or is it totally silent?

I had the previous 2.0Ghz model a while back, and dont remember it beeing this "noisy" (I put noisy in quotes, because its not bad, but it is noticable)

Share your experiences :)

EDIT: Added info about previous machine
Click to expand...


I did the same upgrade and I am very happy with the Scorpio, mini is nearly silent...I have to put my ear to the mini to hear it at all. My fan is spinning at about 1450 average, and I don't notice it at all. My Newertech with a 250 gb drive is FAR louder.

I ran xbench on my mini with 4 gb and the 120 HD and got a score of 112 and then ran it with 4gb and the new 320 gb drive and it scored 169! Very nice improvement. :)
I forgot to run it with the original 1gb...did anyone else?

Also, I hope this is just because I did it so late at night, but I ordered the memory and HD from different vendors and they arrived about 3 days apart. I couldn't wait for it, so the memory went in first. That time I didn't set the second chip in securely enough, so on startup only had 2gb! :mad:

Then with the HD, I installed it, thought all was fine, installed OSX and noticed that I didn't have sound, in fact, settings determined I didn't have any sound device at all! :confused: Turned out that I failed to re-connect it when I was finished. So I had to open it once more...must be 5 times now! Now I can do the whole thing in about 10 minutes...tops! ;)
 
theodk said:
Hi everyone, I bought the base 2.0Ghz model and got around to adding 4GB's of RAM and a 320GB Scorpio Black HDD today, and so far the machine is really flying!

One thing thou, the machine (also before I upgraded the RAM and HDD) is not as silent as I had hoped. I tried to install SMCFanControl to see how fast the fan is spinning, and its spinning at 1500 RPM.

I really hate when I can hear computers, since I would prefer they were silent (who would not I guess). But how are your units, when you sit 2-3 feet away, can you hear the fan humming, or is it totally silent?

I had the previous 2.0Ghz model a while back, and dont remember it beeing this "noisy" (I put noisy in quotes, because its not bad, but it is noticable)

Share your experiences :)

EDIT: Added info about previous machine
Click to expand...

My mini sits on my desktop beside a 24" display. With 2.26GHz processor, 7K320GB Hitachi HDD and 4GB ram, the mini purrs along with the fan at 1495 rpm (read in iStatPro widget from iSlayer.com), which, in my environment, isn't noticible. So far, even while editing huge Photoshop files, I haven't heard my mini. On the other hand, my 2.2GHz MacBook (also with 4GB ram and 7K320GB Hitachi internal) frequently spins it's fan up to a very noticible level when I do some more intensive work and I really don't like that about the MacBook, but I tolerate it because it's such a great little laptop!
 
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