Holy shit, it’s another Mac mini CPU upgrade post
Posted by Jaymz, May 9th, 2006 in Hardware, Mac, Tech
So.. by my count so far, this makes it the third CPU upgrade story since the Mac mini came out.. or fourth if you count the mysterious guy on some mailing list, who claims he has a Merom and it works flawlessly in the mini.
I’d just like to first state that doing this is a really dumb thing to do. Seriously. It’s downright fucking stupid. Y’know those shows on TV where the guy warns you not to try this potentially dangerous stunt at home before doing something utterly stupid? Well, I just did something stupid and I’m warning you not to try this ever. You are one dumb motherfucker if you follow my lead. These things are REALLY not designed to be upgraded processor-wise, and in my 10 years of experience dicking around with the innards of computers, I can safely say that installing the 2GHz Core Duo in Arturia Mini was the most harrowing experience of my life, and I’ve even swapped out the processor in my old P3 Thinkpad R31. Oh god. I cannot believe it paid off.
Of course, I never would have been tempted if I didn’t see some dude on eBay, selling a bunch of 2GHz Core Duo engineering samples for an extremely cheap price, or the fact that the first 1GB stick of memory I bought for this thing didn’t arrive until the day before the CPU did. I’d like to think I was extremely lucky in installing this thing, because my god there are so many opportunities to royally fuck this thing in its proverbial ass like a racially insensitive comment about large black men and state penitentiaries. Don’t do this ever. I mean it. You could not pay me enough to try something like this again.
So now we got that out of the way.. how are things? Well, the extra 1GB stick kind of helps speed things along as well, but it’s running awesomely. I’m putting along at about 45 to 47 degrees celcius when doing run of the mill crap, according to the SpeedIt kernel extension. I’ve seen absurdly high temperatures on the MacBook Pro’s when running idle, so I’m thinking this is a good thing. My mini is still cool to the touch, but the fan’s running full bore. In a room with a G5, and dual core 3GHz P4, I’m not really all that bothered by it. I’m hoping to christ that I applied the correct amount of thermal paste, and that the heatsink is mounted correctly.. oh god. I don’t even want to look. See what I mean about not doing this? The horror doesn’t end even after it’s finished.
I’d post some kind of benchmarks or something.. but I only have Quake 3 on here.. and hey.. it’s a goddamn mini. Besides, I’d much rather rely on the overall feel of the system, and I think it’s running great. There’s a definate speed increase, but I did install more RAM at the same time, so I can’t attribute it all to the CPU upgrade. But yeah… if you’re going to upgrade this thing? Stick with the RAM and hard drive. Seriously. This is like the dumbest thing one could do to a brand new computer. Seriously, don’t do this guys… but if you do and fuck things up horribly, it’s not my fault.
Did I mention not to do this?
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Hello and welcome to Respect Sakura, yet another shitty blog under the premise of being an animu blog, when it's really just about Jaymz's tech leanings, spending habits and crack-inspired ramblings on topics noone cares about. Oh, and that other guy posts stuff sometimes, too.
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Awesome. I can’t imagine how many people would fuck their Minis up trying to do this.
you should have taken pics of the inside of the mini as you did it.
So wheres the old old processor now?
The old processor is sitting in one of those little plastic foam things that come with AMD processors, currently on my desk. I’m going to keep it around for insurance, in the event that horrible things beyond comprehension occur.
As for take apart pics, and stuff like that, other people have done this better than I. Furthermore, the digital camera I have access to sucks and rarely works right. It sucked enough as it is to dismantle the damn thing, and get the CPU heatsink off. I didn’t want to document my horror at the same time.
Do it. I want to at least have the chance of seeing you cry on video if “ohsnap”.
lol shooda put an amd in thar!
I have upgraded my Core Solo Mac Mini just a few days ago, to a Core 2 Duo 1.83. I agree with you, this is something not advisable to do :-). I almost damaged the motherboard, but luckily everything works OK. I had upgraded the RAM to 2Gb before and the upgrade of the CPU makes the Mini incredibly faster. Now I’m not sure whether the temperature is right, tha fan didn’t seem to speed up even with the CPU at 90ºC !!!, so I had to install fancontrol (http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/) and now I have a quiet and cold mini.
I know this is a quite old post, do you still have this upgraded mini. How does it work 2 years after the upgrade?. I bought mine 2 years ago, but I had to wait all this time to have a fast mini (the Core Solo was really slow).
Greetings from Spain,
Daniel Muñoz
Holy crap, this is old.
Yes, Arturia mini is still kickin’ around. I’m currently in the process of turning her into a HTPC system for my big ass TV.
As for the fans, etc.. you might want to pop the lid, and have a look to ensure the little fan connector right at the front of the system is connected. When putting the Mac mini back together, it’s the easiest thing to overlook.