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Mini Memory Upgrade Help

M

MacMini9

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 30, 2008
4
0
I bought a Mac Mini refurbished from Apple last October. My specs are:

1.66 Core Duo
2GB Memory
100GB 7200RPM
Combo Drive
Leopard

When first got my Mini I took it apart to upgrade to 2GB of memory and a 100GB 7200RPM drive. It went well except for one of the memory sticks wasn't showing up for some reason. I decided to let it go cause I didn't really want to take it apart again and every thing seemed to be working well enough otherwise.

I had some free time today (I know, idle hands are the Devil's work), so I thought I'd take it apart again to if I could get both sticks of memory to register. Why pay for it and not use it? It didn't go as well this time. The disassembly part went fine which it usually does the second time. It looked like the top stick wasn't in all the way. I re-seated both sticks. and put it back together. I plugged it in and turned it on but got no video signal. The fan was running very loudly, which it has never done before. It was the only thing telling me it was on. I didn't put it back together completely since I wanted quick access if for some reason it didn't work out. I again re-seated the memory, but got the same result. So then I tried one stick at a time. One time I tried it, I did get video, but it was some kind of folder with a error sign on it. I noticed that the WiFi had become disconnected. After I reconnected it, it went ack to the same result, a loud fan and no video.

So that's where I'm stuck, a loud fan with no video. I'm not as up on my Macs in general so I'm not sure what this means. I could try the memory in my laptop just to see if it's working. If anyone has a suggestion as to what my next step should be or what the cause of this is, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for looking.
 
Well I did make some progress. I guess the fifth time's the charm. I re-seated the memory again and this time it worked. It booted and both sticks are showing up. I'm still having issues with the fan. I think its running at full bore for some reason. It was always very quiet before. I barely heard it. What could possibly be causing this? Is there some setting or switch I possibly messed up? Thanks for any help.
 
sounds like you forgot to reconnect the fan control cable. The little cable you should have disconnected at the front of the mini by the optical drive. If not check it is connected properly. Had the same problem and I hadn't inserted it fully (just resting in place)
 
What can I say you were right again. The guide on the site I used wasn't working and I didn't save a copy last time. I completely forgot about the fan cable when I pulled it apart this time. I'm lucky I didn't damage it while dissembling it, but alls well that ends well I guess. With 2GB of memory and a 7200RPM drive, I thankfully foresee no need for further upgrades.

Thanks for the help.
 
Sorry to hijack the thread somewhat, but how did you find upgrading the hard drive to 7200 rpm? Did you notice any dramatic increases in speed? Thanks.

Upgrading a mac mini is so frustrating!
 
I didn't find upgrading the hard drive all that difficult, except when I forget stupid stuff. The hard parts are getting the case apart and putting the fan cable cable back, just cause I got fat fingers. The rest seemed pretty straight forward. There's a pretty good guide here:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/Mac-Mini-PowerPC/82/

I never used the 5400RPM drive. I had an extra 7200RPM drive laying around from when I upgraded my ThinkPad and did the upgrade right away. I personally prefer a faster drive and think it gives a performance boost though not a huge one. Some of the newer 5400RPM drives are pretty decent especially if you need a lot of space. I personally don't.
 
Ah right thanks. I scratched the underside of my Core2Duo mini quite badly when upgrading the RAM.
The loading times for applications seem quite slow, so i thought the hard drive speed was the bottleneck.
 
I have been reading through a few of the mac mini threads/posts lately & alot of peeps seem to think that the mini only supports up to 3GB ram.

i've just checked out the Intel website & according to them the Intel 945GT chipset has a maximum memory capcity of up to 4GB

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/945GT/index.htm

So for all you people wanting to get a mini but are unsure of its capabilities then fact is that it supports 4GB DDR2 ram & yes it runs in Dual Channel mode as well.

Also maximum/fastest CPU would be the 2.33GHz Merom C2D CPU which has 4MB L2 Cache.
 
Thanks for the update. I was getting confused with all the different speculations about the mac mini's ram capabilities.
 
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