Mac mini gets ripped to shreds, isn't so dull
By Laura June 
posted Mar 6th 2009 11:21AM
posted Mar 6th 2009 11:21AM
There's something slightly disconcerting about seeing a fine, new piece of hardware torn apart before your very eyes, but we'll freely admit that we get some satisfaction out of it. The new Mac mini (above) looks about like what you'd expect it to on the inside, and very similar to the previous model, albeit slightly rearranged. It's a fairly sparse affair, nothing wildly unexpected going on in there -- well, with the exception of the tiny magical troll running at a steady pace to keep the gears grinding -- ever-so-silently, of course. There are a few more shots after the break, but hit the read link for the entire, supremely interesting set.
[Via Engadget Spanish]
[Via Engadget Spanish]
There's no rebate inside? Damn.
We've seen this before... how about some specs now, as in which chipset it uses etc?
I always assumed they will filled with chocolate, peanut butter, and dreams.
Nope. Just a note that says "Help! I being held prisoner in an oppressive Mac mini factory".
No, that what Obama promised. Not Steve Jobs.
The mini contains NO peanut products!
No fairy dust and unicorn tears?
LMAO
and dreams... :D
dont forget the marshmallow spread too!
That's a reese's.
@anexanhume
Yup. But, due to proximity of production facilities, your Mac Mini may contain traces of peanuts, hazelnuts, soy, milk, rye, yeast, eggs, and gluten. Allergics, be adivsed.
@kjb434
And if things don't work out, we have staunch supporters, who instead of complaining, really took to the cause of making this country a better one, like you to thank.
So do we know yet if the processor is socketed?
Yes. Its not.
Sweet !! - I can't wait to get my hands on one - any word on the MAx Ram ?? Apple says 4 gigs but - they said that for the Macbook and it can really take 8 gigs so.......
If you think the machine locking up and stuff with 8GB is workable, then yeah, it probably can (like the MacBook).
They can take 6GB, but not 8GB. (You lose a tiny bit of performance by not having parallel RAM chips, but the extra 2GB of RAM more than outweighs it.)
(Along those same lines, I'm curious is the quad Mac Pros can take a 4GB chip or two to stretch the 8GB limit to even just 12GB, which would be more than enough for my needs.)
Interesting. Mac Mini's acting as webservers? Arent those tiny hard-drives a bit slow for that?
I'm Pretty sure your looking at 30/50 megabyte per second with the internal HD - with the FW800 - you could definitely plug in an External RAID storage - get you megs per second up a bit more - Im not sure how many people actually have fast enough internet connection to fully take advantage of whipping fast hard drives but the more the merrier right !
webserver? fast hard drive? que?
They are just regular old 2.5" HDDs...
@jason
It's actually a legitimate question. Web servers can usually keep a large amount of data in memory but not all of it, and thus disk random read speeds are really important. Also keep in mind that if we are talking about serious hosting we are not talking about a home internet connection. We are talking about MANY users with home internet connections accessing your data, and possibly many of them, accessing random bits of it. Access times becomes crucial, and a 2.5'' pata/sata 5400 or 7200rpm HDD will roll over and die if the requests get pretty bad. The reason to use FW800 or higher would be for the ability to use more powerful drives.
Works fine for a home webserver. You don't need much of an HD to saturate a 256kb/s (or even 1Mb/s, whatever) upload.
Depending on what the server's doing it would be perfectly fine as a more serious server too (particularly if the site fits into RAM anyway). Not a very sensible choice for that though since you can probably get better performance (even when taking into account energy usage) from other, non-Apple solutions.
Price?
*sigh*
Apple has had unilateral pricing for years. I'm sure if you really wanted to find out, you could look on apples website... I refuse to tell you that it starts at $599 and the next higher version is $799... I absolutely refuse.
Learn to google.
that's one sexy putty knife.
I'm glad it's easier to take apart than my eMac. ..I still need to find a hex bit to get the thing open.
Is the updated Mac Mini finally user-upgradable in terms of changing out the memory and hard-drive? Or is the putty knife still required?
wow
Has someone posted a MEMORY UPGRADE guide for the new Mini?
Thanks.
Step 1-Aquire Mini
Step 2-Cry because you just spent 600USD on a shiny box that we be obsolete next month by one with 100 more MHz worth of processor for a hundred bucks more
Step 3-Open said Mini with putty knife
Step 4-Remove HDD and Disk Drive
Step 5-Locate RAM
Step 6-Using finger like objects, slightly rotate RAM clips outward from RAM
Step 7-Remove RAM
Step 8-Insert new RAM
Step 9-Reinstall HDD and Disk Drive
Step 10-Plug err in
Step 11-Discover that your RAM was not sanctioned by Apple and cry when OS X tells you so.
Step 12-???
Step 13-PROFIT!
@Cristian Walters: finger-like objects! I knew I was missing something...
FAIL
Trolls inside Macs...not really surprising, is it?
hahahahah win comment of the day.
Thank you for letting me out,
Windows sucks.....Apple rules......All you Windows Fanbois are jealous because you can't afford an Apple.
So is the 2.0 and 2.26 processors the same? Just in overclocked form? Since the socket is no longer socketed, Apple created 2 different models? That seems to be costly... Unless the latter is just an overclocked 2.0.
Kinda like when I overclocked my Mini G4 from 1.42 to 1.5+ with just soldering different jumpers.
I'd like to see some videos of people putting all those devices back again in working order after the session.
I opened up devices myself and often it's very frustrating how one little thing won't work right anymore, a button that won't click right, a hum in the audio, etcetera.
Not to mention that sometimes they deliberately seem to design them so no living soul can put them back together.
@xdurus:
lol, youre wrong. i could buy a mac right now if i wanted to, but why would i? my $400 core2duo, 3gb ram, 250gb hdd XP box is fine.