Teardown of new Mac Mini

528 Views | 1 Replies | Last: 9 yr ago by JonLobb
JonLobb
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Because there was so much discussion about the Mac Mini in the launch thread I thought some here would find this interesting, especially about the hard drive configuration.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+Mini+Late+2014+Teardown/30410?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Apple+teardowns+galore&utm_content=Apple+teardowns+galore+Version+A+CID_aa34ac57a60ec97d9067b331c7da6d43&utm_source=CampaignMonitor

So it looks like overall they really cleaned up the interior configuration of the MacMini and made it more like a laptop and less like a desktop. This has both it's good and bad points I suppose.

The bad is that it is confirmed that you can not replace or upgrade the RAM yourself, it is soldered to the motherboard. The good is that means faster and more responsive RAM though. The upgrade price isn't unreasonable either though. Since the 4GB version would come with 2x2GB cards anyways to upgrade to 8GB would have meant buying 2x4GB cards, which would cost you almost the $100 that Apple charges for the upgrade anyways.

The most interesting thing, and best IMO that I see is that instead of 2 SATA connections for hard drives now you get 1 SATA and 1 PCI-e. Adding an SSD to the base model HDD version should be as easy as purchasing a compatible PCI-e SSD. Of course these SSDs ARE more expensive, but they also perform much better than SATA SSDs.

So there, that's my 2 cents and my summary of the new MacMini. I think it is without a doubt the best $500 desktop PC on the market right now, and it's not even close.
SpicewoodAg
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AG
quote:

The bad is that it is confirmed that you can not replace or upgrade the RAM yourself, it is soldered to the motherboard. The good is that means faster and more responsive RAM though. The upgrade price isn't unreasonable either though. Since the 4GB version would come with 2x2GB cards anyways to upgrade to 8GB would have meant buying 2x4GB cards, which would cost you almost the $100 that Apple charges for the upgrade anyways.

Is the RAM actually faster and more "responsive," whatever that means?

Is RAM speed and responsiveness (whatever that means) a factor in the real world performance of the Mac Mini?
JonLobb
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quote:
quote:

The bad is that it is confirmed that you can not replace or upgrade the RAM yourself, it is soldered to the motherboard. The good is that means faster and more responsive RAM though. The upgrade price isn't unreasonable either though. Since the 4GB version would come with 2x2GB cards anyways to upgrade to 8GB would have meant buying 2x4GB cards, which would cost you almost the $100 that Apple charges for the upgrade anyways.
Is the RAM actually faster and more "responsive," whatever that means?

Is RAM speed and responsiveness (whatever that means) a factor in the real world performance of the Mac Mini?
I can't find specs on the newer 1600MHz LPDDR3 ram that the MacMini uses, but the older 800Mhz LPDDR3 had the same transfer speeds and latency as the 1600MHz DDR3 that was in previous MacMinis and is in most laptops.

RAM speed and responsiveness (which means how quickly the PC can find an access what is stored in RAM) can have a big impact on real world performance, especially in memory intensive applications like photoshop and games.

The different may not be huge, and may not even be noticeable unless you were using them side by side for an extended period of time, but there is a difference.

The combination of all those solid state and soldered in components nets in an overall faster and more responsive machine. My MacBook Air, for example, is very nearly as good with Photoshop and Autocad as my desktop, which has an overclocked i7-4770k, GTX 760 GPU, and 16GB of high speed RAM.
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