02-23-2005, 05:32 PM

Well as some of you may have read here, I am brand new to mac's... and to get my feet wet I decided to get a 1.4 mac mini (price is right for a test machine). Anyhow I was very happy with the performance of the computer given the price and what it is (I am a IT professional btw), however like how I was with PC's I am always looking for more. So I purchased a 1 gig stick of RAM... with a Heatshield. After looking at others people's pictures / articles I was a little uneasy about fitment since it is a pretty tight space.

Well it fit in perfect and now the performance (for a low end pricepoint) is amazing. The difference between 256 and 1 gig is astronomical. The one application that I use very frequently MS Entourage took 32 seconds to completly load up with 256 ram, with 1 gig... took a little UNDER 7 SECONDS.

For all those first time mac users like myself who questioned apple or the mini in specific, spring the $180 for the 1 gig upgrade and any of your doubts will soon be erased. The only problem now that I have is I was going to build a new PC with high end equip for about 1400 (I have a side IT business so I get parts at wholesale) - now the thoughts of that are gone - and my eyes are set on the watercooled dual 2.5... gonna have to take the fiance out on the town and then pop the question there to get another :mac:


Ok so taking screenshots might be the one unintuitive thing about OS X


Heres what the memory with the heat shield looks like... fits perfectly


I would highly recomend using a plastic putty knife, left no marks on the Mini


A view from the front with the ram on the left hand side

02-23-2005, 09:57 PM

I didn't think more ram would help program start-up times, maybe I'll have to get a GB. I need one of those plastic putty knifes too, but it is probably too late already.

I had ram with a heatsink installed in my mac mini, it barely fit. The stick I have in there now has no heatsink, fits a lot better.

02-23-2005, 10:17 PM

next step once you have upgraded the ram is to upgrade the processor ;-) overclock it to 1.58Ghz and use nvedit to set the speed for system tools to read

02-23-2005, 10:22 PM

was it difficult to open and close the mini? what about the way the ports stick out in back, howd you take the casing off with them in the way?

02-23-2005, 10:45 PM

The mini was really easy to open actually. The back actually has nothing to hold it in place, just some metal loops to keep the case aligned. As far as taking it off, I tried following multiple peoples instructions, but pretty much they are way to much work lol. With the putty knife I easily worked it into the left side of the mini (which takes a little bit of time to get it to go in) and you hear a series of snaps (sounds like u broke something) and the whole side comes up. From there you have play with the case and a couple easy wiggles frees both the front and the other side. Very easy process.

As far as startup time, I forgot to mention that I had Firefox, iPhoto, and iTunes opened both times so that would be directly affected by ram.

PSCL do you have any links / walkthrus / your own coments on how to do that? definitly something I would be interested in doing.

02-23-2005, 11:26 PM

Originally Posted by itloser

As far as startup time, I forgot to mention that I had Firefox, iPhoto, and iTunes opened both times so that would be directly affected by ram.

That makes more sense. Try Camino instead of Firefox, you'll like it.

For overclock info, go here:
http://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/macmini/

I took mine all the way apart but I wussed out, my soldering skills aren't that great.

02-23-2005, 11:55 PM

Originally Posted by mynameis

Try Camino instead of Firefox, you'll like it.

Just loaded it, seems much faster, and I like that it looks much more like Safari / Mac layout.