repeater75 said:
For God's sake, man! POST IT!
I've read a few of your posts and I do believe you know your stuff. So, I trust your results would be typical for anyone with a decent amount of experience tweaking their PC.
I am typing this from my OC'd Athlon T-bird which is getting replaced by a Mini on my birthday (March 14th, woot!). And I've been building PC's for over 10 years. I'm sick of this cheap PC hardware and the annoying OS. I've used Linux since 1999 but it just doesn't have the polish and great proprietary apps that the Mac has.
I have seen another thread in the switcher area that you posted on. The guy says he's going to use "hot tweezers" to pull the "jumpers" off the mobo. Does that work? I don't own a soldering iron, but my wife sure does have some tweezers in her scary bag o' cosmetics. I'm sure I could snatch them while she's not looking and kick the mini up to a respectable 1.58!
This is exciting too, because I was going to buy a stock 1.42 and now maybe I'll go for the 1.25 and get a 60gig 7200rpm drive and some RAM.
Also, it would be extra keen if you could take some photos and show which ones to pull off if you want which speed choices.
Well then it looks like I'll be posting a FAQ within the next couple days.
...As far as using hot tweezers to remove the resistors, I guess it’s worth a try, but they would have to be pretty thin tweezers - the resistors are literally no bigger than the tip of a small sewing needle. And I'm not entirely sure how advantageous heating up the tweezers would be in effectively removing the resistors since most standard soldering irons operate at around 800 degrees - so I can't imagine there would be any obvious difference in using hot tweezers or tweezers at room temp... All in all, you are just trying to rip off the resistors anyways.
Also, to bring your Mini to 1.42GHz, a soldering iron is required since the resistor configuration for that particular speed requires that you close an additional circuit (meaning you would have to solder a bridge between 2 of the pins). The configuration for 1.50GHz and 1.58GHz does not require that you close the additional circuit - all you need to do is remove the resistors. So, ironically, it is actually easier to reach 1.50GHz/1.58GHz than it is to reach 1.42GHz, especially if you are an inexperienced solderer.
I do recommend the Cold Heat Soldering Iron (
www.coldheat.com) if you are interested in soldering or learning how to solder - you can pick one up at your local radio shack for $20. It is a great tool, especially for beginners.